


Ruins of Our Own Construction

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-03
Updated: 2011-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are fighting injured in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but just because they have a world full of new problems, doesn't mean the old ones have gone away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: Season 2 AU. Written for the l4d_bigbang. This is a crossover between the Supernatural and Left 4 Dead 'verse, but everything is explained so you don't need to know anything about Left 4 Dead to play along.
> 
> The artwork was created by the absolutely amazing culper355. Her work can be found included in this story and at her art master post - http://culper355.livejournal.com/6165.html
> 
> Countless thanks to meus_venator, saltnburnbaby, smidgeson and sorrydreaming for their incredible beta work; a_phoenixdragon for the wonderful read-through; chaos_erevos and tifaching for checking out the beginning; lmcdon for her perpetually awesome medical guidance; elusive_life_77, glasslogic and melantho for answering my silly L4D 'verse questions. You're all beyond fabulous!

_January 16, 2008  
Snow, Oklahoma _

Pain fired through Dean’s leg. With a drowsy moan of protest, he searched again for the numbness of sleep. He snuggled further into the jacket that lay over him, but it was useless against the cold of the concrete that seeped through the worn denim of his jeans.

“Hey, how’re you doing?”

His brother’s voice woke him enough to bring back the harshness of reality. Suddenly aware, Dean jerked at the sensation of a hand on his shin. The ghost of a touch latched on more firmly when Dean tried to pull away.

“I’d be a hell of a lot better if you’d quit fondling me.”

With a disgruntled growl, Dean opened his eyes only to clamp them tightly shut once more against the glow of the flashlight Sam had pointed at his ankle. He flexed the kink from his neck as he squinted his eyes open again.

“And if this useless piece of crap worked,” Dean added with a jab of his elbow to the radiator heater he was propped up against.

Despite his best effort, he couldn’t even pretend to feel any heat coming from the device that was, without any electricity, just a piece of useless scrap metal. His car had heat, but instead of being comfortably sprawled over the leather of her backseat, Sam had insisted on checking them into the worst dive they’d yet stayed at.

Taking in a deep breath, Dean rubbed his hand over his face and quirked a brow to his silent brother. “So, is it morning or did you just get lonely?”

Sam pushed up the sleeve of his flannel shirt and shone the flashlight at his watch. “It’s almost noon.”

“Noon?” Slowly he registered the thin strip of light squeezing in beneath the door. Surprise wrinkled Dean’s face as he sat up straighter. “Then what’re we still doing here?”

“I overslept.”

The words were followed by a nasally sniffle that reminded Dean why Sam wasn’t in a talking mood. Sam had been feeling seriously crappy last night. While there were too many shadows for Dean to get a good look at him, Sam’s overall posture said he wasn’t feeling any better today.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

“I’m not the one with the broken ankle.”

Ignoring Dean’s glare, Sam hiked up Dean’s bloodied pant leg and gingerly pulled down his sock. His foot was only loosely nestled in his untied boot, but he had to hide a grimace when Sam repositioned it. Dean rolled his eyes and muffled a groan while Sam tentatively unwrapped the makeshift gauze binding and ran his cool fingers over the discolored, swollen skin.

“Lay off the goods, Nightingale.” Dean scooted over and tried to move his leg away from his brother. “I told you it’s not broken.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Dean. You didn’t shovel down those pain pills over a sprain. You can’t walk.”

Dean gave a disapproving shake of his head as he watched Sam brush back his shaggy bangs. It looked like his brother was thinking hard enough that his head might explode when there was nothing to think about. They didn’t have any options here.

Settling back on his haunches, Sam set the flashlight on its end so that the light beam hit the ceiling and diffused over the cramped, windowless gas station bathroom. It had looked way better in the dark. The foul odor hanging in the air had been enough without actually seeing the darkly stained toilet bowl and grungy, chipped tiles.

“This is the last time you get to pick the room,” Dean said. “We would’ve been fine in the car.”

“Except you couldn’t have gotten out if anything found us.”

“On the plus side, we wouldn’t have hepatitis.” Dean scowled as he lifted his hand from the gritty, suspiciously sticky floor they’d spent the night on.

“Getting hepatitis is about the best thing that could happen to us right now,” Sam replied with another stuffy sniffle. “Until you can walk, we’re not sleeping anywhere without a solid door.”

“I might not be running any marathons, but I got plenty of bullets. Prop me up against my baby and I could take out a whole army of those sons of bitches.” Dean folded his arms indignantly over his chest. “Only reason I listened to you is because I didn’t wanna risk any of her windows getting broken. We just shouldn’t’ve stopped at all.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped as he finished rewrapping the bandaging on Dean’s ankle. “I needed some sleep after driving for twelve hours straight.”

“I got two feet. It’s not like I can’t drive.”

“Dean, you passed out before I did.”

“Whatever.” Dean pulled the jacket from his lap to put it on only to realize that he was already wearing his. “What the hell?” He glared at his shivering brother and threw Sam’s jacket back at him. “You’re the one that’s sick. If this turns into the flu, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Completely ignoring Dean’s deepening glare, Sam slipped his jacket back on and pushed himself to his feet. With a furrowed brow, Dean watched his brother stretch those impossibly long legs that looked every bit as stiff as Dean’s.

Sam grimaced right before a hacking cough hit him. His hand clutched his chest until it subsided, then quickly returned to his side like all that heaving hadn’t hurt like hell.

“Sam?”

His brother cleared his throat and nodded. “It’s fine.”

That was a load of crap. Even in the dim light, Dean could now see the circles beneath Sam’s eyes. Still, what caught Dean’s attention was the worry, not the exhaustion, on his brother’s face. Dean let the silence hang until his brother folded.

“What if the rumors are true?” Sam finally asked.

“The rumors that you’re in desperate need of a haircut?” Dean’s tone was dismissive as he lifted his gun from the floor and checked the round. “They’re true, Rapunzel.”

“I’m serious, Dean. What if this isn’t the flu?”

“Are you still stuck on that damn graffiti we saw in Austin?” Dean let his head fall back against the whitewashed wall before his eyes narrowed on Sam. “I swear to God, Sam, if someone spray-painted ‘Unicorn Petting Zoo’ on a wall, you’d ask where to buy tickets. We know it’s not the flu changing people. Aggression, going all freakin’ rabid psycho overnight - we’ve seen this before.”

“We haven’t seen anyone change. We don’t know how long it takes.” Sam tried to pace, but only made it a couple of steps before ending up at a wall. His back remained to Dean as he spoke. “What if we’re wrong?”

“Uh...I don’t know. We’ll figure it out, but right now we’re up to our ears in raving, bloodthirsty monsters that used to be people. Croatoan fits.”

When Sam remained quiet, Dean clenched his jaw. “Look, no one here is getting the flu or turning into a damn zombie. The only thing we’re getting is breakfast.”

He reached for the radiator to haul himself up. He was barely able to wrap his fingers around the cold metal before Sam was at his side with the flashlight in hand. Abandoning the radiator, Dean latched onto his brother and tried to keep his breath steady as the pain sharpened in protest to his movements.

“Do you think Bobby’s really gonna know what’s going on?” Sam asked as he hunched down so that Dean could loop his arm over Sam’s shoulders.

It was a stupid enough question that Dean knew it was only meant to distract him from the pain. “He can’t know less than we do, right?” Dean huffed. “Just gotta...son of a bitch!”

His tentative effort to put weight on his foot failed miserably. The useless thing gave out under his weight. When he stumbled, Sam tightened his grip around Dean’s waist. “I gotcha.”

Dean nodded and blew out a steadying breath of air. “I’m good.”

The disorienting bouncing of the flashlight beam in the darkness didn’t let Dean see Sam’s face, but he could feel the skepticism in the way Sam’s strong arms wrapped further around him.

“Seriously. We just gotta stick together and hope Gordon lost our trail. Those communal showers didn’t exactly improve his attitude any. That dude is a way bigger pain in the ass than any of these zombies.”

Bracing against Sam, Dean hobbled to the exit. The heavy lock slid aside and Sam pushed open the door, blinding them both with the blare of low angle winter afternoon sun. Dean gripped the pistol tightly in his hand until his eyes adjusted enough that he could actually see.

Outside, it was clear blue sky, dense forest cover behind them, and a long, empty stretch of highway in front of them. The corner of Dean’s lips quirked up at the sight of his car sitting safely out front of the gas station.

Everything about the scene would’ve been the epitome of serene if not for the fact that they were staring at a major highway and the only sound to be heard was the occasional chirping of birds.

Despite the highway, they were in the middle of nowhere and, unlike everywhere else these days, the chances of a horde of zombies descending down on them was basically nonexistent. They would’ve been fine in the car. 

Sam could worry about zombies all he wanted, but Gordon was the one they needed to watch out for. Ever since he’d broken out of prison, the bastard had been gunning for Sam. It seemed like every time they turned around, Gordon was there.

“You can’t exactly blame Gordon," Sam said as he led Dean through the swinging glass door of the gas station. “It’s not like he’s totally wrong about me.”

Dean tilted his head and stared at his brother. “So you did start a world ending plague as part of your demon occupation plan?”

“Well, okay, he’s wrong about that.”

Once the counter was in reach, Dean slid his arm from Sam’s shoulder and used the edge of the dusty counter to brace himself. When Sam still wouldn’t release him, Dean shoved his brother, who finally eased his death grip. Even then Sam remained hovering at his side.

The shelves around them were half empty and scattered with overturned cartons. They weren’t the first ones to raid this gas station, but there was still enough to scrounge.

“He’s wrong about everything,” Dean said as he grabbed a bag from behind the counter before hopping on one foot towards the closest shelf. “Hell, I hope he finds us again. The guy is starting to seriously piss me off.”

Sam silently brooded while filling a bag with salt containers and first aid supplies. Meanwhile, Dean worked on hunting down something that looked marginally edible. He passed on hotdogs that had shriveled to jerky on their skewers and the loaves of Wonder Bread that had molded in their bags.

A smile touched his lips as he found assorted flavors of Hostess fruit pies scattered over the floor. Awkwardly, he bent forward to grab them and instantly regretted it. He just managed to catch himself on a shelf.

“Sammy, get your ass over here and pick up our breakfast.”

Before Sam could respond, he buried his mouth in his arm and tried to suppress another cough. Dean creased his brow as he fully took in the paleness of Sam’s features. His brother was getting sicker and fast while everyone around them was going nuts. Dean hoped like hell that his brother was wrong about everything.

~~~ 

_FBI Field Office - Norfolk, VA_

For fifteen years, Victor Henricksen had sacrificed everything. He’d pushed aside family and anything resembling a social life. He hadn’t considered a vacation in over a decade. The last weekday he’d taken off had been seven years ago after the night he’d been shot at a standoff in Bloomington.

Engrained in his memory was not his own shirt darkening with blood, but the body of the twelve year old hostage and the smile the sight had brought to the lips of the deranged gunman.

After three weeks of physical therapy, he’d returned to the job and spent weekends on the road tracking leads for one psycho bastard or another. He’d signed his last divorce papers and practically moved into his office, spending most waking hours between combing through files and listening to or giving debriefings.

Some might say he was obsessed. They’d only be wrong in saying it was a bad thing. He hadn’t become one of the best by sitting around with his thumbs up his ass while deranged killers breathed free air.

It wasn’t just a job, which was a damn good thing, because as far as jobs went this one was a thankless, mind numbing, pain in the ass. But the work he did saved lives.

Idly, he wandered over to the window and peered beyond the dusty blinds. He braced his hands on the windowsill while staring out over the grey horizon onto the empty streets a few stories below. A glance to his watch confirmed that it should be gridlock out there, but there was no grind of traffic or rush of pedestrians.

Only the overflow of uncollected trash and the occasional scurrying rat filled the street. Silence hung in the air, still enough to make his blood run cold.

The world he’d given everything for was all but gone. Control and order had surrendered to chaos. The society he had vowed to serve and protect had dissolved into mobs of the Infected and militias of citizen survivors. It should have been a call to arms.

Instead of stepping up, the government he had placed all his faith in had raised the white flag. In the midst of this plague, people needed help more than ever and all they got were empty federal offices and an out-of-service recording when dialing for emergency services.

Most would say that it had become every man for himself, but Victor refused to accept that. Loyalty and duty weren’t ideals of convenience. He had made a commitment to protect the American public and it would take a lot more than some damn flu outbreak to force him to throw in the towel. But there were some things even his stubbornness couldn’t stop.

His fingers played over his short beard as he turned to scan the nearly empty office. What had been the center of his life was now discolored, bare walls full of thumbtack holes, a lightly scratched desk emptied of its contents and an office chair with well worn armrests.

The computer and lamp on the desk had become useless paperweights when the higher-ups had surrendered and stopped running the building’s generator. The only light in the room spilled in through the window and illuminated the last mug shot remaining on the wall.

The already grim lines of Victor’s face deepened as he approached it. Leaning forward, he stared into the smug eyes of Dean Winchester. There wasn’t a law in the books this nutcase hadn’t laughed at and Victor could only guess how many innocent lives the man had taken with that smirk on his lips.

Victor was one of the few that could see Dean for what he was. This guy was so good that nearly everyone else who met him got brainwashed into thinking he was some kind of hero even while the blood clearly stained his hands. It was only one of the reasons Dean Winchester was so dangerous.

With a sharp tug, Victor tore the black and white printout free from its tack. What they did, stopping the worst of the worst, had been deemed no longer necessary. Monsters like Dean had been given a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

Victor hadn’t technically been fired. There was nothing left to fire him from. The FBI had been absolved, or ‘absorbed’ as the internal release had phrased it. Officially he was now an enforcement agent for the Civil Emergency Defense Agency. That mandatory switchover had his blood boiling.

Given the current state of emergency, his issue wasn’t with the CEDA’s stated objective of disaster management. His issue was with the fact the CEDA couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag. It didn’t help a damn thing that he’d never met a CEDA agent capable of looking him in the eyes and giving him a straight answer. 

It might be different on the inside, but changing his job title didn’t make Victor any less of an outsider. The CEDA agents didn’t want to work with him any more than he wanted to work with them. Even if they did feel like sharing, he was skeptical that they had anything worth listening to.

The handling of this mess had been a debacle of epic proportions from beginning to end. An entire campaign touted as being for the public benefit had been no more than a collapsing agency’s attempt to save face. Now it didn’t matter that it had all been lies because there was no one left to hear them.

Heavy footsteps closing in drew Victor’s unfocused gaze up from the Winchester mug shot. By the time his eyes settled on the doorway, Agent Reed had waddled in under the weight of a large box loaded with files. After a few more clunking steps, his partner dropped the box onto the desk with a resounding thud.

“Well, I think this is the last of them, Vick.” Reed’s breathless voice was muffled by the flimsy CEDA issued face mask covering his nose and mouth. “You know that thing’s supposed to go on your face, right?”

Victor’s mask hung forgotten at his neck. He was no doctor, but he had a brain. There was no reason to think the thin material would make an ounce of difference against this contagion when CEDA agents weren’t seen in public outside of Level A hazmat suits.

“You’re sure this is all of them?”

Resting on the edge of the desk, Victor tossed Dean’s mug shot into one of the boxes and flipped through the top folders of the newest box Reed had delivered.

“Of the current cases. What’re you going to do with all these files anyway? Heat your apartment?”

With an irritated glare, Victor dropped the folders back into the box. Fueling bonfires for heat in this brisk winter cold was exactly where these documents would end up if he didn’t take them.

There was no telling what state the online criminal databases would be in once the computer systems came up again. These folders may be the only remaining information on hundreds of federally wanted criminals. What he and Reed had spent all these years doing was still important.

Victor gestured towards the boxes. “They’re still out there.”

While Reed followed Victor’s eyes, he shook his head. “Maybe, Ahab, but now they’re zombies.” The man chuckled to himself and nodded to Dean’s wanted poster. “Of course, you always did know how to pick them.” He held his hand out to Victor. “It’s been good.” 

He gave a nod and clasped Reed’s hand. “Damn good. Now get the hell out of here. I hear Florida is great this time of year.”

“I’d just settle for the population being human.”

“It’s a disease, not Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Victor knew exactly what Dean would say about all this. He’d spout off about monsters and demons and all kinds of whacked out worlds of crazy, but he’d be wrong. Regardless of what this looked like, one thing was certain. “They’re just people.”

“Call them whatever you want, but when the bad guys are growing to the size of Mac Trucks it’s time for new employment. You know, it’s not too late for you to come. Vick, there’s just no winning this one.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not worth the fight.”

It was enough of the truth that there was no reason to mention the other obvious fact that this job had become him. While it sounded nice right now, after one day of lounging back on a beach in the Florida Keys he’d go stir-crazy. If he wasn’t in the trenches, he’d just wish he was.

“You always were a stubborn ass.” Reed patted Victor’s back. “Just watch yourself, okay?”

“Yeah. You do the same.”

While Reed disappeared down the hall, Victor returned to the window when he heard the hiss of airbrakes outside. On the asphalt below, a tour bus surrounded by a convoy of military escort vehicles parked in the middle of the empty street.

Anyone in this Safe Zone who had been certified clear of the Green Flu and didn’t want to make the transition to the CEDA was being offered a one way bus ticket to Florida. Rumor had it that the Sunshine State was free of the Infected. Others said just the islands were clear and still others, like himself, said the whole fairytale was a load of crap.


	2. Chapter 2

_January 16, 2008  
Kansas City, Missouri _

Dean’s good foot pressed heavily on the accelerator as the Impala sailed down I-35 towards Kansas City without passing a single car. In part, Dean just wanted to get to Bobby’s as fast as possible. The cell phones had crapped out and they hadn’t yet been able to get Bobby on the CB radio.

He also laid on the gas just because he could. There were no cops to pull him over and nothing but zombies to hit. The world was collapsing around them and they didn’t know why, hell, they couldn’t even find anyone left to save. They had been so caught up in the media hype about the Green Flu that they hadn’t read the writing on the wall. It was pretty damn obvious that the demons had been behind this from the start.

Now they needed to get their asses into gear more than ever and after one rookie screw up, Dean couldn’t walk, and he sure as hell couldn’t fight. Speeding down the highway was all he had left to blow off steam.

Though he also wanted music blaring from the speakers, he instead left the radio off and tried to lose himself in the soothing rumble of the Impala’s engine. His weary eyes stared out the windshield and into the seemingly endless darkness that spanned out before them.

After turning off the interstate, they had driven through suburbia and were approaching downtown. The skyline was pitch black. There was only the twinkle of impossibly bright stars and the occasional rogue flicker of a bonfire. It was better than what they’d seen back east where the skies had glowed orange from the fires. From what they’d been able to tell, all of Pennsylvania had been ablaze.

Dean should be focusing on trying to figure this all out, but it was too big, too surreal. Instead his focus kept drifting to the seat beside him.

Sam was slumped against the passenger side door. Flopping around in a fevered sleep had left his long limbs flung all over the place. Dean grimaced at the raspy sound of his brother’s breathing. Listening to it only put Dean further on edge, but he felt like he had to listen to make sure Sam was still breathing.

His brother was just sick. It wasn’t anything more than that. At least that’s what Dean kept telling himself while his own sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel all the tighter. He only let up on the gas when they neared where he thought his target should be.

The change in speed was enough to stir Sam, who jolted awake with a ragged cough. Dean looked over at him and watched as his brother’s eyes flickered open. Rigidly, Sam twisted in his seat so he was sitting up straight in it. He looked dazed as he stared out into the night.

Dean reluctantly returned his own eyes to the road, keeping an eye out for any zombies big enough to dent his car. They might not technically be zombies, but they sure as hell acted close enough for the title to fit.

“Where are we?” Sam’s voice was scratchy, and by the sounds he made after he finished talking, he was futilely trying to clear a gallon of mucus from his throat.

Instantly, Dean’s mind went to a time when his kid brother had gone into hysterics about being sick. A little sniffle had tickled Sam’s nose and the kid had been sure he was terminal. More than a couple of times, he almost had been because Dean had wanted to kill him for being such a whiny little bitch. Or so he had claimed.

There was no way Dean would ever fess up to the girly notion that he actually liked taking care of his brother, even when Sam was a whiney pain in the ass. But those times were long gone. Sammy wasn’t four anymore, and Dean would be hard-pressed to imagine Sam griping about Ebola, let alone some damn cold.

“I’m picking the room tonight.”

Dean was too busy swallowing down his concern to say anything else. He craned his neck as he tried to make out the buildings in the darkness.

It was a toss up whether they’d be better off in an abandoned hotel with no heat, or in a theoretically zombie free area in the middle of the woods next to a campfire. The answer didn’t really matter. Neither of them was up to tending a fire and the whole theoretical thing wasn’t flying with Sam. If they were wrong, and they weren’t alone in the woods, the fire would attract those things like moths to a flame.

For once, Dean aimed for the nicest hotel he could find. They had driven past this Hyatt Regency a couple of months ago on the way to a case and had opted for sleeping in the car. Now they didn’t have to worry about being noticed by the FBI and every room was free.

Dean turned into the massive parking lot that lay empty aside from some overturned garbage cans and smashed up debris. He was about to cut the engine when his eyes zeroed in on something in the distance.

“What the hell?”

Out the back window, Dean had caught a glimpse of moving lights from the direction they had just come. It had been a couple of weeks since they had last seen the glow from anything but their own headlights. Or Gordon’s.

“That son of a bitch,” Dean muttered beneath his breath.

“What?” Sam’s hand reached for his gun as he followed Dean’s stare.

With a sharp jolt, Dean hit the accelerator and surged the Impala into the cover of the parking garage. Dean’s seat belt dug into his thighs as the car flew over the speed bump. The instant they were far enough in to be out of view from the street, Dean flipped off the headlights and cut the engine.

Loud sounds and bright lights were dinner bells for these zombies. With a bright flash of light, the things went from mindlessly lumbering to attacking in seconds, and where there was one, there were twenty of them. Dean’s busted to hell ankle could attest to that.

The darkened, swollen tissue was out of sight now, buried beneath the layers of gauze Sam had wrapped it in after applying a field splint. Immobilizing it helped, but it didn’t help that much.

Dean leaned forward and slipped his hand beneath the seat. The disembodying blackness that had swallowed them was disorienting, but not enough that he didn’t know exactly where he’d left his whiskey. He put the bottle on the seat between his legs and dug into his pocket to fish out the now half empty bottle of the highest strength painkillers the gas station had to offer. 

After a swig of whiskey, he tossed the good stuff aside. He grabbed the other pill bottle from his pocket and shook out a couple of Tylenol capsules. The sheen of sweat he'd seen over Sam's face before their plunge into blackness said Sam's fever was only getting worse and his brother's face always got that pinched look when his head was killing him.

“Here.” He blindly reached out for Sam. His fingers felt down his brother’s arm until they brushed the bare skin of his hand. “Take these.”

“Dean, I’m fine.”

“And I’m the Easter Bunny. Shut up and take the damn pills.”

Even if they weren’t being followed by any humans, they still had to stay put for a few minutes to make sure that any zombies that had caught their position lost it before they got out of the car. 

“How’s the foot?” Sam rasped.

“As awesome as your throat. Maybe you and I should...” Dean threw his arm over his eyes as a stream of bright light from behind them flooded the darkness. “Oh, come on!”

Beside him, he heard the rustle of Sam shifting on his seat. Nearly simultaneously, they both clicked off their pistols’ safeties.

Sam cleared his throat and pulled in an awkward breath. “Can you see who it is?”

“I can’t see crap.” Dean gave up on the rearview mirror and twisted in his seat to look behind him. He squinted out the back window into the lights but only ended up flopping back into his seat before looking to Sam. “But I’m going to take a wild ass guess and say it’s not the hotel welcoming committee sending out our complimentary stripper.”

As his eyes adjusted, Dean threw another look over his shoulder, but he still couldn’t make out the driver beyond the blare of headlights. The other car was just idling outside of the parking garage. 

“Okay, wait here.”

The insane words didn’t fully register until Dean heard the creak of the passenger side door opening. “Sam!” Dean’s hand shot out and latched around Sam’s forearm. “Did that fever fry your brain? It’s a freakin’ trap!”

With a quick tug, Sam pulled free of Dean’s grip. “Or it’s someone who needs our help.”

“Someone who’s stalking us,” Dean hissed. “We haven’t exactly had lottery winning luck lately.”

“So your plan is to just sit here?”

He sneered at Sam, mostly because sitting here was the only thing he could do and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Sam was right.

Either it was someone who needed help, someone who wanted to help or it was Gordon. Whoever it was, they couldn’t just wait until those damn headlights and rumbling engine rallied every zombie in Kansas City. Even as sick as he was, Sam was more capable of investigating the situation than Dean.

Dean plopped back into his seat with a huff. It was the closest thing to a confirmation Sam was going to get, and Dean was pretty sure his brother knew it.

“I’ll be right back,” Sam promised as he climbed out of the car.

Dean tried to keep an eye on Sam, but his brother disappeared from sight. For a whole ten seconds Dean sat still aside from the impatient tapping of his finger against the seat’s leather. When he still didn’t see or hear anything, he pushed the door open.

“This is ridiculous.”

The muttered words barely escaped his lips before an arm constricted around his throat. A strong tug jerked him to the side so that he still sat on the seat, but his back was pressed firmly against the man who held him. He choked against the suffocating grip, grimacing as he felt a hot breath against his ear.

“So damn predictable, Dean.” With the harsh whisper, the chill of a knife’s blade brushed against Dean’s cheek. It played just over his freckles before the flat side rested against his jaw. “No need to make a fuss now. Just drop that gun and keep real quiet like.”

It didn’t take looking behind him to know who it was. “Blow me you sick...”

Dean’s gasped words cut off as Gordon tightened the pressure on his windpipe. Lacking options, Dean let the pistol slip from his fingers and Gordon tucked the knife away, but didn't ease his stranglehold on Dean's throat.

“Dean, the car’s empty,” Sam called back. “Dean?” 

From where he sat, Dean couldn’t see Sam and he knew Gordon was hunkered low enough beside him to use the Impala to hide himself. Dean tilted his head back, but he still couldn’t see what Gordon was waiting for.

“Almost there,” Gordon spoke beneath his breath.

Twisting harder in Gordon’s hold, Dean caught sight of Gordon’s gun out of the corner of his eye. It was leveled on Sam. There wasn’t enough air remaining in Dean’s lungs to shout and Gordon had him pinned. Desperately, Dean’s eyes searched for anything he could use.

He stopped clawing at Gordon’s arm long enough to slam his fist against the Impala’s horn. In the next moment, he used his good leg to shove himself off the seat and back into Gordon. Dean toppled out of the car, nearly taking Gordon down with him.

His splint banged against the car’s doorsill on the way down, tearing a ragged gasp from his throat. Dean instinctively pulled his knee to his chest, curling into himself at the blinding shot of pain.

He blinked away the moisture in his eyes and locked his sight on Gordon’s fallen gun. Before Dean could crawl to retrieve the pistol, Gordon hauled him up. With an unsteady hop Dean struggled to keep as much of his weight on his uninjured left foot as possible while Gordon clutched him tightly to his chest. A moment later, the steel of the knife again pressed against his throat.

This time the cutting edge sliced lightly over the tender skin, pulling a grimace to Dean’s face and spilling a trickle of hot blood. Dean gritted his teeth and scanned the headlight-lit concrete pillars for the one Sam hid behind. 

“Come on out,” Gordon coaxed. “It’s over.”

“Gordon, let him go!”

The shout came from behind them. Gordon jerked Dean around with him so quickly that Dean lost his footing completely, flailing his arms to steady himself. Sam held a gun fixed on Gordon. Dean knew Sam wouldn’t take the shot with Gordon swinging him around and there was no question that Gordon knew it too.

“I plan to...just as soon as we end this.” It wasn’t enough to get him an opening, but Dean felt Gordon’s grip on him falter when Sam stepped into full view. A question laced his tone when he spoke again. “You don’t look so good, Sammy. Must be exhausting massacring the whole damn North American continent.”

“What the hell kind of crystal ball are you pulling this crap out of?” Dean gave a defiant tug to Gordon’s grasp. “He’s sick, you stupid son of a bitch. The only thing he's been massacring is boxes of tissues and the living dead.”

Dean exchanged a wary look with Sam as Gordon chuckled.

“Nice try, Dean. But, I’ve been keeping tabs on you two. That’s right. I got my sources and I know you were at ground zero right before all these freaks were unleashed.”

The headlights from Gordon’s car reflected off the sheen of cold sweat coating Sam’s skin. “Ground zero?” Sam’s eyes shifted to Dean for an explanation, but he could only shrug in reply.

“You’d make one hell of an actor,” Gordon told Sam. “See, I almost half near believed that you’re as stupid as you look.” He jutted a thumb towards himself. “But me, I’m not as stupid as I look. You can flash those big doe-eyes at your brother here and make him believe the world’s flat, but I know the truth. I know you were in Pennsylvania.”

Dean furrowed his brow at the declaration. “We were working a case in Pittsburgh, not unleashing a zombie apocalypse. Did you hunt down every one of the other twelve million poor bastards that were in Pennsylvania with us?”

“Those millions of people are now monsters because you couldn’t do the right thing when you had the chance.” 

Gordon again sliced the knife over Dean’s throat, drawing a fresh crimson trail. Dean winced and by the time he opened his eyes, Sam had raised his hands in surrender.

“Toss it aside real slow now,” Gordon told Sam with a nod towards the pistol. “That’s right.” Despite Sam having put aside the gun, Gordon tightened his grip around Dean’s chest. “Come on, Dean, you can’t really expect me to believe it’s coincidence that you two walked away immune.”

“You can believe whatever...what the hell was that?”

The three of them stood in frozen silence when another cackle echoed from somewhere not far beyond the parking garage. Gordon’s grip on Dean tensed an instant before he shoved him aside. With a hollow thud, Dean hit the side of the Impala and slid down to the concrete.

He rode through the wave of pain and opened his eyes in time to see a grotesquely distorted thing leap from the shadows and land on Sam’s back. At first, the bloody, hunched-over creature looked like the lovechild of a spider monkey and a chupacabra. It was only after a moment of watching it that Dean realized its face was almost human.

The creature gripped Sam’s head in its claw-like hands while Sam struggled to buck it off him. All the while, the thing cackled like a maniac. Dean had seen a hell of a lot of crap in his days, but this one left even him momentarily frozen in shock.

When Dean pulled it together enough to scramble for the fallen pistol, he couldn’t find it. His startled eyes looked up to see that Gordon had retrieved the gun and held it aimed at Sam’s back as the creature somehow steered Sam towards the parking garage’s exit.

“Gordon, no!”

Gordon hesitated, looking down to meet Dean’s eyes with a strangely contemplative expression that Dean couldn’t make heads or tails of. All Dean really saw was Gordon steadying himself to take the shot.

Dean couldn’t even make it the six feet to tackle Gordon before he pulled the trigger. Horror twisted Dean’s features at the reverberating sound of the bullet being fired and the sight of gore exploding over his brother’s collapsing body.

“You goddamn son of a bitch!”

With his pain forgotten, Dean tried to hurl himself at Gordon. The man easily stepped back to avoid him, letting Dean tumble back to the ground.

“You’re welcome,” Gordon replied smugly.

Dean’s hand clenched into a fist as he lay on his stomach with his nose pressed against the rough pavement. All conscious thought had shut down by the time he looked up at Gordon with pure venom in his moisture rimmed eyes. There weren’t words for what Dean planned to do to him.

“Dean, are you okay?”

At the cough-ridden question, Dean quickly rolled onto his back and sat up. Sam ran up behind Gordon and rushed past him to Dean’s side. Blood and chunks of flesh coated Sam's shoulders and hair, but Dean quickly realized that none of it belonged to his brother.

Gordon shrugged at Dean’s questioning look. “Like I said, I’m not stupid. And Sammy, even he ain’t that good of an actor.”

While Dean sat in stunned silence, Sam stripped off his flannel with a disgusted grimace. Sam used the material to swipe some of the larger chunks from his tangled hair before tossing it aside.

“What was that thing?” Sam asked.

“A jockey.” At Gordon’s reply, Dean glanced to Sam who looked equally confused. Gordon looked at them both like they were idiots. “A back humper?” Gordon offered like it made anymore sense.

Dean cringed. “You mean that thing was... Awesome. You always did know how to pick them, Sam.” Dean ignored Sam’s glare as he wrapped his arms around his very much alive brother so Sam could haul him to his feet. “Like it’s not enough that we have the zombie apocalypse, we also need horny little monsters jumping out of the shadows.”

“You guys really don’t have a damn clue do you?”

With Sam’s help, Dean leaned back against the Impala and glared at Gordon. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you for the last five hundred miles.”

“You’ve got the Antichrist holding your chain, Dean. It’s not exactly a stretch to think he started this plague.” Gordon said the words casually as he glanced beyond the parking garage entrance while checking his gun. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

“You mistakenly freeze up a computer on a bad porn site. You don’t mistakenly almost murder my brother half a dozen times!”

The only thing that stopped Dean from throwing himself at Gordon wasn’t his excruciatingly painful foot, but Sam’s hand pressed firmly to his chest. “Dean, he saved my life.”

“Oh yeah, he’s a freakin’ hero. Another inch to the left and it would’ve been your brains splattered over the pavement.”

“I don’t usually miss,” Gordon replied. “Look, we don’t got a lot of time here, so let’s get a few things straight. Just because Sammy here didn’t start this, doesn’t mean he’s not still a monster. He’s just moved down in priority on the killing list. Those things out there, they’re not zombies and that thing wasn’t trying to get your brother to third base. It was trying to lead him into the horde.”

It wasn’t until the words left Gordon’s mouth that Dean heard the pounding of feet down the pavement not far beyond the parking garage. At the sound, Sam quickly pulled Dean aside so that he could open the car door and ease him into the backseat.

By the time Sam jumped into the driver’s seat, the horde of zombies had already surrounded Gordon’s empty car. There was nothing slow and lumbering about these things. They weren’t impossible to outrun for those who had two working feet and they died easy enough, but they moved in fast enough to seem to come out of nowhere.

“Get in,” Sam told Gordon.

Dean sat bolt upright in the backseat and glared at his brother. “Are you nuts?”

“Dean, he knows what’s going on, and we don’t know crap.” 

"Yeah, well, ignorance is bliss."

"Dean..."

While Dean tried to think of a way to beat into Sam’s head how stupid this plan was, Gordon looked between his gun and the swarmed car. He was obviously counting bullets in his head. Somehow the fact that Gordon didn’t want to come with them was a minor reassurance.

“Or don’t get in,” Dean added with a quick hushed whisper to Gordon. “I got no problem with you getting your ass turned into zombie chow.”

Gordon shot a distrusting look towards Sam, but still slipped into the backseat with Dean as Sam fired up the engine. When the headlights flared on, Dean got a quick glance at large red letters spray painted on the parking garage wall.

‘There is no Safe Zone.’

There was no time to contemplate how much gang graffiti had changed before Sam swerved the Impala around and slammed on the gas. Dean braced himself against the side door when the car screeched around the corner towards the back exit. He looked out the rear window to see the horde of sprinting zombies losing ground as the Impala skidded back out onto the street.


	3. Chapter 3

_FBI Field Office - Norfolk, VA  
January 17, 2008_

Applause broke out over the meeting hall while Victor stewed over the fact that they had taken his gun. He’d promised himself he’d never hand over his badge and yet he’d done just that this morning so that he could sign up for this three ring circus.

The CEDA new agent briefing had been everything he’d expected – three wasted hours that he would never get back. Better yet, with martial law initiated, it was impossible to tell where the military ended and the CEDA began. It didn’t matter what agency the speaker was from. CEDA, marines, former FBI – they were all reading from the same damn storybook.

Each speaker stepped up to the podium like a weather forecaster confidently stating that their computer calculations reported it would remain sunny. The problem was, not a one of them had bothered to pull back the blinds to see that it had been raining for weeks.

Victor leaned back against the wall and watched his fellow newly recruited CEDA agents shuffle out of the conference room on their way to twiddle their thumbs. All they’d really been told in the briefing was that everything was going as planned.

If this crap excuse for a disintegrating government was the plan, then it was time for a new plan. For now, the official word was that everything was under control and they would be told more as soon as the higher-ups knew it. It was his first day on the job and he was already doing nothing but waiting around on standby.

He muttered his disgust beneath his breath and worked his way through the thinning crowd, back towards the stairs. It would be his last trip up to the old office. He’d moved most of the boxes down to his car last night, but hadn't finished before he’d been shuffled out by security enforcing the curfew.

As he headed up the next flight of stairs, he pulled down his face mask and wondered why the hell he’d had Reed take the boxes to his office instead of dumping them straight into his car. But of course, what should have been a few quick trips had turned into a monumental pain in the ass without the elevators.

The hallways were barely lit with ambient natural light. It didn’t matter how little light there was, he could’ve been blindfolded and still not faltered on his well-worn path.

It was that time of the day when the building across the street blocked the sun to his office window. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d strolled in here on quiet mornings just like this with a steaming cup of coffee and clicked on the lamp that may never turn on again.

Standing around and crying about it wasn’t going to help a damn thing. Without a second glance to the shell of an office, he grabbed the last box from the desk and headed back down the hall.

He was huffing by the time he made it to the parking garage and was distracted enough that he nearly walked straight into one of the guards. It took him a moment to realize that the man, a military officer holding some serious firepower, had purposefully stepped in his way.

Unimpressed by the man’s scowl, Victor raised an impatient brow and cleared his throat. “Excuse you.”

Without bothering with words, the officer pointed to a hideously intense orange notice posted on the wall. It illustrated a man wearing a face mask and declared in big bold letters, ‘Wear face mask at all times’. 

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that as soon as I unload this stuff.”

The officer widened his stance in front of the doorway. “You can get right on it now, Agent.”

Victor had half a mind to drop the box on the man’s foot, but didn't feel like picking up the spilled files afterwards so he placed it carefully on the ground instead. Grinding his teeth, he snapped the elastic of his face mask over his ears. As the impatient officer watched, Victor took his time adjusting the mask over his mouth and pinching the metal clip over his nose.

“Happy?”

When the officer stepped aside, Victor hefted the box back off the floor and tried not to throw his back out in the process. He kicked open the door and stepped out into the brisk air of the open-wall parking garage.

Sunlight spilled in, creating long, deep shadows that kept Victor on edge even though he knew this place was sealed tighter than Fort Knox. Outside the Safe Zone people were barely surviving and here armed military officers guarded the solid steel gates of a parking garage full of mostly abandoned vehicles.

The rear of his car sagged under the weight when he rested the box on the bumper just long enough to pop the trunk. Technically, it was a government issued vehicle, but the agency that had issued it was defunct and he was still doing their work.

He had to tip the oversized box to fit it under the lip of the trunk. The angle was steep enough for the top few files to slide from the unsealed box. Grumbling to himself, Victor pushed the box the rest of the way in before retrieving the fallen folders.

His hand stopped just short of tossing the files back into the box when he caught a quick glimpse of a Polaroid photo of a terrified girl in a hospital gown. He instantly assumed she was a rape victim, but the paper attached to the photo was filled with handwritten medical jargon, not typed criminal data and it was vaccine records and test results all to do with the Green Flu, not any STDs.

There was no name, only a number attached to the girl. An uneasy feeling settled in Victor’s gut as he leaned back against the trunk and started flipping through photos of other people with different numbers and vaccine information. The sheets were all dated after the Green Flu had hit and several had additional photos attached to the patient sheets – photos of the Infected with the same number from the original patient photo scribbled at the bottom of the Polaroid.

When he dug further into the box, Victor found more patient records, full reports and a listing of 'licensed' CEDA testing facilities. Most of the sites were prisons. While he wanted to give the benefit of the doubt, it was spelled out pretty damn clearly. With the CEDA stamp of approval, tests were being conducted on prison inmates.

Victor made a life of putting people behind bars, people who didn't deserve to ever again see the light of day, but they were still people. What bothered him even more was how few of the people pictured looked like they ever should have been in a prison to begin with. 

~~~

 _Interstate 29 - Nebraska_

Gordon was half sprawled over the backseat of a car with an engine that idled so damn loud that it might as well have been built to attract the Infected. If Dean stopped letting his emotions rule him, he’d dump this gas-guzzling steel boat at the next abandoned dealership and pick up one of those shiny new hybrid things. It wasn’t Gordon’s style, but the engines ran quiet and it would take a hell of a lot less gas siphoning to keep it running.

Instead of listening to the common sense of survival, Dean had nearly shot Gordon full of lead just for kicking his boots up onto the seat’s upholstery. Dean wasn’t going to dump this car any sooner than he was going to put a much-needed bullet in Sam’s head.

There was no question that Gordon wanted to do the honors of killing that thing behind the wheel. But unlike Dean, he could set aside his wants and see a tactical advantage for what it was.

Gordon worked alone and kept his connections at a distance, but the world was changing faster than one man could keep up with and his former connections had all but dropped off the face of the planet. Hell, he’d had to kill half of them himself.

Then there was Dean, a more than capable hunter that was gullible as all get out. He was a gun for hire for anyone who knew how to sweet talk him just right. With Sam on the way out, Dean would be desperate for someone to latch onto, and Gordon could put him to good use. There were just a few formalities to take care of first.

His finger was still itching to tighten around the trigger of the 9mm held loosely in his hand. In the front seat, Dean also held a pistol in plain view on his lap. Through the night, Gordon had watched as Dean’s head lolled repeatedly to the side just to jerk back up a moment later, each time shooting a glare over his shoulder at Gordon.

Half the time Gordon had smiled in smug amusement, half the time he’d glared back. He just liked shaking it up to keep the kid guessing. There was no reason for him to kill Sam while Dean slept. When he decided to end the human-faced monster, he could do it just as well when Dean was awake.

Instinct told him that Sam wasn’t just pulling the wool over Dean’s eyes on this one. Gordon should have known this thing was too big, too well orchestrated to be the work of one rogue demon army militant. It didn’t make Sam innocent, but it did make him a convenient game piece.

From the backseat, Gordon watched what might as well have been a married couple in front of him. There had been only glimpses in the dark, but now that the sun was up he could see in full view the worried glances each one of them sent when the other wasn’t looking.

There were the little touches as they coddled each other in a way that Gordon found impossible to believe that a hunter like John would have ever approved of. Sometimes he wondered if these two really had a damn thing to do with the John Winchester he had met. John hadn’t been a soft man, and he had been dedicated to his craft over all else. The boys in the front seat, they just didn’t get it.

They didn’t understand sacrifice or devotion to a greater cause, though Gordon at least had to give credit to Sam for being a manipulator of the highest caliber. He’d be a half impressive guy without the stick up his ass and if not for the whole evil incarnate thing. And Dean, he’d be a hunter to put his old man to shame if he would just give up the show and admit to being the killer he really was.

“Heads up, Gordy.”

Gordon’s eyes flashed up just in time to see Dean toss something back at him. Without any effort, Gordon caught it in his free hand before even looking to see what it was. Given that Dean wouldn’t ever harm a hair on his beloved Sammy's head, it was safe to say that the package wasn’t a bomb.

“Lemon fruit pie,” Gordon read off the package.

“Sour, just like you,” Dean said as he tore open his own package of some other flavor. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.” His expression again bled into one of those sappy, worried looks as he glanced at his brother. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

Sam kept his bloodshot eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Dean, if I even look at another one of those stale sugar bombs, I’m going to hurl.”

“We can stop and get something else. We also got some of those nasty ass ration bars in the trunk.”

“No, I’m fine.”

Silently, Gordon stared into the rearview mirror to catch the subtle shifts in the Winchesters’ faces and words unsaid between them. Dean gave a slight shake of his head and a frustrated sigh that seemed purposefully just loud enough for Sam to hear.

“Yeah, okay, but you better start thinking about what you want for lunch because this is the last meal you’re skipping.” Dean took an oversized bite out of his pie, running his tongue over the seeping red-filling before it could plop onto his shirt. “And once I’m through eating you’re pulling this car over so I can drive.”

Gordon looked up from his own sorry excuse for a breakfast when the two in the front were done playing nursemaids. “Don’t bother. You’re going to want to turn off soon anyway.”

“Hey, this isn’t a freakin’ taxi service,” Dean said. “You wanna get out, no one’s stopping you, but we’re not chauffeuring you to wherever the hell you’re going.”

“Oh, I think you will. ‘Cause if you got even half a brain, you’ll be going there too.”

Dean stopped chewing long enough to give Gordon a long, evaluating look. “You’ve turned trying to kill us into an Olympic sport. I got no clue how Sam talked me into letting you stay breathing, let alone sit in my car. Once we dump your ass, we’re going as far as we can get in the opposite direction and if you even think about taking one step in that direction, you’re dying bloody.”

“I already know where you’re heading.” Gordon smirked at Dean’s challenging glare. “Sioux Falls.”

With a frustrated glower, Dean bit his lower lip. “You don’t know jack.”

“Stay away from politics, Dean. You lie worse than you drive.”

“What the hell’s wrong with my driving?” Sam gave a sputtering sound that was probably a chuckle that had tickled his throat the wrong way. There was an indignant look in Dean’s eyes as he glared at his brother. “Sam? Got something you want to say?”

Sam only shook his head. The kid had given up pretending that it didn’t kill him just to breathe. It wouldn’t be long now and all would work out like it should.

“You wanna find Bobby?” Gordon interrupted. “You ain’t gonna find him in Sioux Falls. Last word I got, that place had been wiped off the map.”

“Right. And we’re supposed to believe you because you’ve taken a whole five hour break from trying to kill Sam.”

“Believe me or don’t, doesn’t make a lick of difference to me. But I’m telling you, hunter to hunter, if Singer is alive, he’ll be at the military pick-up site in Bellevue.”

“What the hell is the military picking up that Bobby would give a crap about?”

“Survivors.” Both boys seemed startled by the reply. Gordon had never been able to figure out how these two survived without ever having a clue about what was happening around them. “You two get this is over, right?”

“Earth to Gordon. This thing isn’t close to calling it quits.”

“You aren’t wrong,” Gordon acknowledged with a slow nod. “This plague, these monsters, they’re not gonna stop until there’s not one single drop of innocent blood that hasn’t been turned or spilled. It’s the fight that’s over.”

“Huh,” Dean mused. “Funny, I never took you for a quitter.”

Gordon chuckled, drawing a bit of a smile to his lips. If there was one thing Dean was damn good at, it was pushing buttons. It was cute and all, but these Winchesters must be wearing some serious rose-colored glasses to be able to look out on this skeleton of a world and think there was anything left to save, let alone that they could single-handedly do it themselves. If nothing else, Gordon had to give Dean kudos for a well-fostered ego. Too bad it would be the death of him.

“You wanted to know what that thing that took your brother for a ride was. It was a human, used to be anyway. They call them jockeys ‘cause they jump aboard and steer you wherever the hell they want – into a horde, off a bridge. Hell, I saw a man run straight into a burning building with one of those freaks laughing it up.”

For a moment, Gordon fell silent and just let Dean mull it over. While he might be an ace at the physical stuff, the guy wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist. Even after some time to think it over and a silent consult with his brother, Dean just wrinkled his brow in confusion.

“We’ve hunted a whole hell of a lot of crap. Nothing we’ve come across, nothing in our Dad’s journal, says that humans can up and turn into little hunched-over maniacs.”

“Time to rewrite your training manual ‘cause that there is just the tip of the iceberg. The last guy I worked with, I had to take his head off.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Gordon smiled, but his eyes became distant when he shifted his gaze out the window. Truth was, he didn’t blame Dean for doubting any of this. If Gordon hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, there was no way he’d believe it himself.

“One day he started acting off, real feisty like, and the next he sprouted a damn six foot tongue. And you should’ve seen this thing down in Orleans. It hurled my own car at me. The real kicker, I met its wife the day before. Humans get sick and they change into monsters. Now you tell me how you’re gonna stop that.”

Dean shoveled the last of his pie into his mouth and tapped Sam’s shoulder. “Pull over.”

“Dean...what if he’s right?”

Finally, there it was. Sam’s eyes moved up to the rearview mirror, and through it, met Gordon’s. He might be the future of evil, but Sam at least seemed to have enough humanity left in him to connect the dots. Sam was sick, and he’d only be getting sicker until he turned into something real nasty. It wasn’t any different than the path he had already been on, but this was something more immediate, more concrete.

Dean caught their exchange and slapped Sam’s shoulder harder. “I don’t know about the rest of this crap. Maybe people are changing, it’s not like it would be a first, but he’s not right about you. Seriously, Sam. Just pull over the damn car.”

The corner of Gordon’s lips tugged up when Sam didn’t so much as glance at the shoulder of the road. “Maybe we should just check this out. It’s on the way.”

“And maybe I should kick both your asses,” Dean replied. “What’s there to check out? Gordon wants someone to rescue him, fine, but that’s not our gig. We’re the ones that do the rescuing, and we sure as hell don’t give up.”

The argument lapsed as Sam was lost in a coughing fit. Dean grimaced and tensed enough that Gordon could make out the stiffening of Dean’s shoulders even beneath the cover of his leather jacket.

Without a word, Dean reached back near Gordon and dug out a water bottle. He unscrewed the cap before practically wrapping Sam’s fingers around it. After some tentative sips, Sam nodded a silent assurance to Dean.

Sam leaned slightly into Dean after his breathing had more or less steadied out. “If we take him where he wants to go, at least he’ll leave us alone.”

There was no straining required to make out Sam’s words even though they were said with a slightly hushed tone. It was clear enough that Sam was playing the secretive card solely for Dean’s benefit. For once, Gordon was sure that he and Sam were on the same page, but telling Dean, now that would blow the whole deal.

“Putting a bullet in him would be a surer thing,” Dean grumbled.

But despite the words, Dean let it drop. Hiding his satisfaction, Gordon again nestled back in his seat and let his head settle on the sun-warmed leather of the headrest. Things were finally heading in the right direction.

~~~

A couple hours dragged on before they pulled off the main road and Gordon started handing out directions for the Affutt Air Force Base. He ought to be awarded a medal for his restraint in not whipping Dean’s ass for all his damn bitching and moaning. Dean wasn’t even the one driving. Once Sam was taken care of, he and Dean were going to have words.

Gordon shut up and let the visuals do the talking as they closed in on the airbase. The airfield was stocked with U-Haul style vans. Makeshift security fencing topped with razor wire surrounded the primary site.

It took getting closer to see the shredded bits of bodies littering the concrete around the contained area, but it didn’t take long to guess that automatic weapons had been the cause of the carnage. Automatics did well enough dispatching the Infected so no shock there and the sight of the dead was old news these days.

What called Gordon to attention weren’t the rotting remains, but the rare sight of the living that was confirmed when the car pulled up to the fence. Inside the makeshift compound was a flock of survivors assembled like lambs for the slaughter.

These refugees had every right to be terrified. They weren’t hunters and there was only a layer of chain link separating them from the Infected. Many wore face masks and all buried themselves deeply in their coats as they tried to stay warm. Some huddled in groups around fires while others tried to keep as much distance between themselves and anyone else as possible.

Gordon was stowing his gun when he glanced up to catch Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Dean raised a brow to Gordon who only raised his own expectantly in return. Not only hadn’t they parked, but the car was still running.

It was Dean who broke the silence. “This is your stop.”

“In case you weren’t listening, this is the only stop.”

“No way I’m leaving my car.” Dean smirked and leaned back in his seat. His expression grew serious as he looked through the fence at the gathered people. “The sidelines, it’s really not our thing. You go kick back with your tequila while the big boys take care of this.”

With a rough chuckle, Gordon shook his head. “You know, I just can’t figure how you can be this damn stupid and still be breathing. This isn’t some demon war, it’s a disease. The only thing to do is hole up in a Safe Zone until this whole thing blows over.”

“So let me get this straight. The military is going to carry us away to a magical land where people don’t get sick? Come on, seriously? This isn’t a rescue, it’s a freakin’ all-you-can-eat buffet.” Dean gave a wave to the assembled crowd before he turned in his seat to face Gordon. “Whatever's going on, someone’s gotta save what’s left of this sorry world and it’s not gonna be a bunch of CEDA yahoos.”

“All this risking your life for lost causes is just gonna get you dead, Dean.”

“I love you too, Gordon. Now get the hell out of my car.”

Gordon shifted in his seat to catch the attention of the younger Winchester who seemed to be keeping silent as much out of contemplation as exhaustion. “Sammy?” Both Winchesters glared at Gordon and he waved them off. “Sam?”

Last night Sam had looked bad, today he looked half dead and sounded the part too with all his wheezing breaths. It wouldn’t be long before Dean’s brother would be just another victim of the Green Flu, just another Infected. Dean would never face up to it, but Gordon could clearly see that Sam was all too aware. It was a bad hand for Sam, but Gordon couldn’t deny, that for him, it was killing two birds with one stone.

It was still hard to believe that Gordon had to resort to pleading with the demonic brother to hunt down something resembling common sense. It wasn’t like he cared. He’d learned from John that Winchesters were stubborn asses. They’d do what they damn well pleased and he couldn’t stop them, it wasn’t his place to even try.

He had no loyalty to these two. If the circumstances warranted it, he’d have no problem landing a bullet in either one of them. But he respected Dean for what he was, and it was a sorry thing to see such a damn fine hunter so happy to throw himself to the wolves over a war that had already been lost.

The thing was, Gordon had no intention of letting them go. Either they came with him or he at least killed Sam. It was that simple and it was nothing personal, just necessity, but he’d really rather not put Dean down if it could be avoided.

Sam finally spoke up and saved him the choice. “Dean, he’s right. I’m infected.”

“Yeah, with a nasty cold. Look, Sam, we’ve seen plenty of people turn without needing a single Kleenex. Not related, and even if it was, Gordon and I would already be infected too so you can drop the self-sacrificing hero crap right now. Just let me drive so you can get some rest.”

There was no time for Sam to change his mind before a pounding at the driver’s side door had everyone in the car tightening their grip on a gun. Gordon’s eyes narrowed on the military officer in a full hazmat suit. It was the barrel of the man’s rifle that had rapped against the window’s glass.

“Shut off the engine and step out of the vehicle.”

Dean made a twirling motion with his hand and leaned over his brother’s lap as Sam cracked the driver’s window just far enough for Dean to call out. “Don’t worry, we’re leaving.”

Not surprisingly, the officer wasn’t impressed. Instead of stepping away, the man leveled his weapon at the front seat and again spoke with a voice heavily distorted by a full respirator. “This is your last warning. All three of you, out of the car, one at a time and line up right here at the fence.”

Sam looked at Dean who shrugged. “Shut her off. I’m not having her get shot up full of bullet holes. We’ll deal with this guy and get out of here.” After the engine stilled, Dean nodded to Gordon. “Guests first.”

Gordon knew how to pick his fights, and Dean might be begging for a beating, but now wasn’t the time to hand it out. Without complaint, he slowly opened his door and stepped out of the car with his hands visible. He flexed his cramped legs and struggled to bite his tongue.

The thought of lining up at a fence had him all twitchy. He’d done more than his fair share of getting real close and personal with fences and bars while doing his time. Just one more reason it was going to feel so damn sweet when he finally did pull the trigger on Sam.

It was Sam who came out of the car next, but he didn’t join Gordon at the fence. “My brother’s hurt. He can’t walk. Just let me help him out.”

“Get by the fence.”

Even out of the corner of his eye, Gordon could see that Sam had no intention of budging an inch without Dean. It was only Dean’s nod of assurance that got Sam to reluctantly step away from the car and move to join Gordon’s side.

In the next moment, Gordon had to grab Sam’s arm to keep him from rushing back to the car when Dean started putting up a fuss. Looking over his shoulder, Gordon saw that the officer now had a friend who reached into the car and yanked a stumbling Dean out. A moment later, Dean was shoved against the fence hard enough for Gordon to feel the vibrations where his hands rested against it.

Sam was nowhere near to a hundred percent, but his reflexes were fast enough to clutch Dean to his side before he fell. Gordon kept to the fence, staying clear of the trouble, while Dean leaned most of his weight into his brother and struggled to find his footing.

“Turn around slowly,” one of the officers said.

The other man, Gordon slowly realized, was a CEDA agent, not military. He walked past Gordon after only a quick glance and stopped at Sam. His thickly gloved hand reached out to Sam, but Dean slapped it away before it reached its target.

“Keep your damn hands off him,” Dean hissed.

Instead of returning to Sam, the man took a few steps closer to Dean, who was still panting as he sneered at the man that had hauled him over to the fence. Ignoring the irritation in Dean’s eyes, the CEDA agent grabbed Dean’s chin and tilted his head up, clumsily using gloved fingers to pry one of his eyes open further.

When he’d finished his examination, the man shoved Dean’s head back against the fence. “Admit these two,” he said with a quick gesture to Dean and Gordon. “Dispose of the other one.”

Gordon almost felt as if he ought to warn these officers about the hell they would unleash if they tried to separate the Winchesters. Instead, he leaned back against the fence to watch the show. If they were saying what he thought, and they could somehow pull it off, then it would save Gordon from looking like the bad guy to Dean.

Another officer stepped forward and latched onto Dean’s arm. Despite being barely able to stand, Dean twisted in the man’s grip. He got one punch into the man’s gut before the officer jammed the butt of his rifle deep into Dean’s ribs.

The momentum of the strike threw Dean’s balance onto the wrong foot. He let out a pained yelp as his leg gave out. Before he even hit the ground, the officer pulled back the rifle and this time aimed the barrel at the back of Dean’s head. Sam moved faster than Gordon would have thought any man capable of, but it wasn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet.

One quick shot fired before the spray of blood splattered to the ground not far from Gordon’s boot. It was about damn time someone did it. He barely paid a glance to Sam’s fallen body, and instead was drawn by the horrified anguish that instantly washed over Dean’s face. It was a mirror image of the look Gordon had seen on Dean’s face last night, only this time, Dean was justified.

It was an interesting thing how quickly that agony switched to rage. Proof to what Gordon had always said, Dean was a born hunter and would be one of the best if he just learned to control that animal inside of him.

Dean was floundering to get up when the officer again spoke. “That one too,” he said with a nod towards Dean.

Now they were just getting wasteful. Gordon took one step away from the fence, but didn’t approach any closer. “I think you’ll be wanting that one. He’s immune.”

He wasn’t even sure that it was a lie and didn’t care if it was. Whether or not it was the truth, the CEDA agent predictably took notice. Gordon didn’t know much about official details, but he’d heard whisperings. He knew they were searching for anyone who might be carrying antibodies against this freak show.

After a moment’s hesitation, the agent nodded. “We’ll see about that.” The man signaled to the officers. “Load him with the rest.”

Not that Dean would have any of it. The boy was still on full suicide mode, hollering at the top of his lungs about killing everyone he could get his hands on while practically crawling towards his bleeding out brother. It was downright pathetic, and the officers weren’t going to find Dean worth the trouble if he kept throwing sloppy punches towards everyone that came within two feet of him.

Nonchalantly, Gordon held his hands up to the officers and stepped around the blood pooling from Sam’s body. Dean didn’t pay an ounce of notice as Gordon stepped up behind him. With one well-placed strike to the back of the head, Dean stiffened before falling still on the ground. 

“I’ll take him from here,” Gordon said as he crouched down to lift Dean’s unconscious body.

When Dean woke, they were going to be having a talk about all those damn pies he’d been shoveling down. He might have looked little compared to his oversized brother, but Dean was a considerable bundle to carry flung over a shoulder.

It was no real difference to Gordon. He gave a parting glance to Sam and allowed himself a moment of satisfaction before he adjusted Dean’s bulk over his shoulder and followed the officer’s instructions towards the loading area.

Where they were going, it wouldn’t be any safer than where they were, but despite what he wanted Dean to think, it wasn’t safety that Gordon was looking for. He planned on holing up and waiting this out alright, but not before he took care of a couple of things first.

It all came down to the fact that the larger the concentration of survivors, the better the hunting would be. Not many of these people would survive, and he’d be there to take care of every last one of them as they turned.


	4. Chapter 4

_January 17th, 2008  
Lincoln, Nebraska_

There weren’t many sensations as familiar to Dean as the sway of a vehicle. The rocking movements and enveloping darkness kept his exhausted mind lulled into sleep until the jostling became more abrupt and his ears aware enough to hear the sputtering rumble and creaking of metal that weren’t the sounds of home.

He jerked up when his aching skull bounced against exposed sheet metal. The throbbing of a yet another head impact was also a sensation that was more familiar than he’d like. Being crammed in like a sardine didn’t help any.

His hand pulled free from whatever was squished against him and reached up to rub the tender lump at the back of his head. He shook off the last of what he was beginning to realize hadn’t been sleep, but unconsciousness.

Opening his eyes brought only more darkness. Blindly, his hand felt the cold steel frame of what had to be a cargo van. His hand didn’t have to venture much further before his fingers pressed against something soft enough to be a body.

At his touch, a surprised gasp came from the body and as he tuned his ears, Dean heard the sounds of breathing beneath the hollow clanking of the van speeding down open road. It was people piled in around him.

When his hand felt to the other side it was instantly knocked away with a stinging slap. “Touch me again and I start breaking fingers,” a familiar voice warned.

“That wasn’t me,” a nervous man replied.

“Gordon?” Dean asked.

“About damn time you came to. By the downshifting, I’d say we’re here and I’m through hauling your ass all over creation.”

Dean’s foggy mind struggled to remember what had happened before he’d been knocked out. He came up drawing a blank. “Where’s here?”

“Damned if I know.”

A woman sitting beside Dean whispered, her tone thick with barely concealed panic. “They’re going to kill us all!”

“If you’re lucky.” Gordon’s disinterested words drew another gasp from the woman and hushed sounds from several others.

“Hey, enough,” Dean cut in. “Nobody’s dying and you shut the hell up.” He dealt a slap to what he guessed was Gordon’s chest.

Dean grunted as a fist was haphazardly thrown into his gut. He twisted to retaliate but there wasn’t enough room to really move and his head swam at the quick movement. With the disorientation, something far more important than Gordon being a bastard tickled at his memory.

“Sam...”

“Sorry, Dean.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those simple, emotionless words slip from Gordon’s lips and not the first time they related to Sam. Dean’s breaths became short and quick, his heart pounding. His mind flashed to the sight of Sam splattered with blood, but he remembered Sam getting up, remembered his little brother pulling him up. 

“What did you do?” Despite Dean wanting the words to sound fierce, the dread came through far clearer. A sick feeling twisted the pit of his gut as another bloody visual pushed at the back of his mind.

When no answer came, Dean’s hand felt out to grab some part of Gordon’s shirt. He gave it a jerk and tightened his fist around the fabric. “Gordon! Where’s my brother?”

“Now don’t go starting a fight you can’t finish.” Gordon twisted Dean's wrist until he had to release his grip on the shirt. “You and I both know what he would’ve become. It was better this way. He got to die a hunter.”

Dean clenched his jaw and tilted his head back to stare up into the blackness. With Gordon’s words everything came rushing back. Sam had tried to save him and those sons of bitches had shot him. Dean hadn’t gotten close enough to see where the bullet had hit. He’d only seen the blood. Too much blood.

“Look, man,” Gordon continued. “I get that this is gutting you, I do, but you gotta swallow it. We got people to deal with here and now.”

“You deal with them.”

Dean barely choked out the words before he lapsed into silence. He screwed his eyes closed and was thankful for the loud clatter of the van to disguise his uneven breathing. After he’d fought back to more controlled breaths, he turned his head in Gordon’s general direction.

“This is all your damn fault.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact and one Gordon was going to die for. “You wanted him dead.”

“Sure, I would’ve killed him myself when the time came. Just like you should’ve and just like I plan on killing everyone in this van who turns up infected.”

The words were said low enough for only Dean’s ears and brought with them the realization that if Dean didn’t take command of this situation, Gordon would. If Sam was really gone, Dean didn’t give a crap what these guys planned on doing to him, but he couldn’t sit back and watch the innocent people around him be killed.

He wiped his cheeks dry and realized for the first time that his ankle had stopped throbbing. His heart again jumped in his chest when he tried to wiggle his toes and couldn’t feel them at all. His hands traced down his leg to find someone else’s thigh pinned heavily on top of it.

“Super,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Hey, how many people do we got here?” His only answer from the other passengers was panicked whispers as the van rolled to a stop. “Crap.”

Outside the van, there was the grinding of a gate or bay door sliding open. The van lurched forward once more before the engine went silent and whatever had been opened to admit the vehicle again closed. The hushed voices around him grew more uneasy and a few started to call out for help.

“Everybody just keep cool,” Dean said as he heard the driver’s door open.

There was some talking outside before the backdoor of the van lifted. Everyone fell silent as a harsh brightness spilled in the open door. Dean’s brow creased at the sight of artificial lights. This place had electricity.

“Everyone out of the van,” a man barked. It was more gun-toting, hazmat-suit wearing bastards like the ones from the entrance to the evacuation site, if not the same ones.

Dean tried to keep his cool by switching his attention to the civilians stuffed in around him. The middle-age woman beside him was unwinding a heavy knitted scarf from her neck as she broke out in a nervous sweat. Her nearly waist length hair flopped into his face and she shot him a nervous, apologetic look.

He did his best to give her a reassuring smile. "You're gonna be okay."

While the uncertainty remained, she gave his arm a gentle squeeze and fought for a smile of her own as she nodded her silent gratitude. Dean could only hope that he wasn't about to make a liar out of himself and looked to the guy sitting on his leg. It was potbellied man with graying sideburns and a tattered business suit. When he met Dean's eyes he then suddenly looked down and mumbled an apology while he tried to shift his weight off of Dean.

"Dude, you're fine," Dean gritted as the man's movement only put pressure against his splint. "Just stay put."

An elderly couple clung to each other in the corner, but most of the people were on the younger side and the majority were men. Dean ached to have a gun in his hand when the sound of crying drew him to a toddler gripped in her mother’s arms at the far end of the van. Whatever these bastards had planned, they weren't going to get away with it. 

Searching for a way to get these people out, Dean looked past the officers at the van’s opening to see that their van was one of several parked inside of some kind of loading dock. It was a large area mostly grey and empty, but with armed military guards at anything that looked like a potential exit.

The place was swarming with hazmat suits directing people around. In the light, Dean realized that he and Gordon were two of the only people in the van not wearing one of those stupid face masks. He was starting to get a bad feeling that everyone knew something he didn’t.

Dean's eyes narrowed on the man who had ordered them out of the van. “How about telling us where we are?” 

“No talking. Everyone remain calm and exit slowly. Keep your hands visible.”

No one else hesitated to get out, though Dean didn’t have a choice but to stay sitting. The heavy tingle of pins and needles raged in the deadweight of his foot along with the echo of the pain that he could do without the return of. There was nothing in the cargo area of the van he could use as leverage to pull himself up with and nowhere to go even if he did manage to stand.

At least if he sat here and played the disabled card he could get one of the officers to come to him. With the element of surprise, he might have half a chance to wrestle a gun free. It wouldn’t get him out of here, but at least he could take a few of them down with him and just maybe one of them would be the son of a bitch that had shot his brother.

“You coming or not?”

Dean’s lost eyes looked up to see Gordon standing impatiently over him. He’d just assumed that Gordon had jumped out with the rest. The fact that he was still here left Dean staring dumbfounded at the offered hand.

“Really, Dean, don’t look so damned shocked.”

Gordon didn’t wait for a verbal response before bending forward and wrapping his arms around Dean. Every instinct in Dean’s head screamed to fight like hell against Gordon’s embrace, but he forced himself to relax and slipped his arm around Gordon’s shoulders for support.

They slowly moved down the unloading ramp until a couple of the officers pointed their rifles towards Dean. “What’s wrong with him?”

“You shot his brother, the guy’s a little pissed,” Gordon flippantly replied. “His busted up ankle might also have something to do with it.”

Dean tensed his arm around Gordon, not entirely sure who here he wanted to punch first. Gordon lost his first place standing when one of the CEDA agents stepped towards him.

“You try laying your latex gloves on me again and I’ll break your wrist,” Dean told the agent. If the man didn’t believe him, he was welcomed to try. Dean’s blood screamed for a fight, to just be able to do something.

The agent exchanged a look with the others and nodded. Dean didn’t know what was being communicated. He didn’t really care. While the officers conferred his attention drifted to the assorted group of families, sleazebags and everything in between that had walked out of the van and were now getting a lecture from one of the CEDA agents.

“What’re you gonna do with these people?” Dean asked.

Gordon gave him a jerk that was nearly enough to throw him off balance before smacking the palm of his hand against the back of Dean’s aching head. “Keep talking and you’re gonna get to be more trouble than you’re worth,” Gordon hissed.

“Bite me.”

“You get in the group on the right,” the man told Gordon before motioning to Dean. “You go left."

Dean followed the man’s eyes to where armed officers stood around the elderly couple from the van. Unlike the direction they had pointed Gordon in, there was no one resembling a doctor waiting for him.

When the officer raised his gun, Dean nodded to Gordon. “You go on.”

“Dean…”

Dean gave Gordon the best shove he could without pushing himself onto his ass. “Just leave me already!”

After a glance towards the officers, Gordon held his hands up in defeat. “It’s your funeral, Winchester.”

With Gordon’s support gone, Dean sagged back against the van’s ramp. He stared down at the ground and tried to force a stable thought into his scrambled head.

“This is the third one in the batch,” the CEDA agent said. “You said you cleaned out the infected ones already.”

“The other two weren’t sick when we picked them up and this one’s friend says he’s immune.”

The agent shot a distasteful look towards Gordon. “And his medical credentials are what exactly?”

“The guy said this one was in Pennsylvania at the start of the outbreak.”

“Is that true? Hey!” A hand slapped the side of Dean’s face and his head shot up, fists ready. “Were you in Pennsylvania?”

“Yeah.” Dean tilted his head and looked between the assembled officers that were all standing around staring at him like he was the freak. “Why does everyone think me and my brother were the only two people there?”

“Sir, we’re going to need you to undress.”

A startled look flashed over his eyes as Dean processed the command. He looked around the corner of the van to see that everyone who had been brought in and sent to Gordon’s group had already stripped. His eyes immediately jerked away when he noticed Gordon among them.

“Did you bring us all here to film orgy porno flicks?”

“Everyone needs to be decontaminated for processing and you need to be examined.”

“I don’t undress for just anyone, and you’re not my type." He stared through the hazmat hood’s shield into the agent’s eyes. “So go screw yourself.”

One of the officers nudged him with a rifle. “Clothes off or they’ll be removed postmortem.”

Dean’s jaw tightened at the voice. “Did you shoot my brother with that gun?” He pushed himself off the ramp, barely registering the pain that surged through his foot. “Did you shoot my brother?” Dean leaned forward until the gun’s barrel pressed tight against his chest. “I’m warning you now, you damn well better pull that trigger. Do it!”

The officer tightened his finger on the trigger just before the CEDA agent put his hand up to push the barrel towards the ground. “We need him alive.”

Dean wasn’t going to wait around for these guys to decide what to do with him, but he didn’t make it even half a hobbled step before one of the officers pulled him around and smashed him face first into the side of the van. His cheek smeared against the dirty metal and his chest heaved in frustration as he futilely bucked against the man’s weight.

“Give me a hand here,” the officer called to the others.

While Dean managed to throw an elbow back into one of the men, all his twisting didn’t do a damn bit of good once a third officer helped to pin him in place. A string of obscenities flowed from Dean’s lips as one of the men cut through the denim of his jeans, which were too tight to be pulled down over his splint - the splint his brother had put in place.

All the ways he was going to kill these bastards rushed through Dean’s mind as the others nearly dislocated his shoulder jerking his arms back to slide off his flannel before shifting their grip so they could strip off his t-shirt. Instead of pulling the shirt all the way off, they yanked his arms free, but left the black cotton pulled inside out over his head so he couldn’t see what they were doing.

Rubber covered hands gripped his biceps hard as they held him in place against the van. He shivered against the coldness of the metal touching his bare skin and tried to catch his breath through the shirt wrapped over his head.

Dean’s eyelashes tangled against the fabric as he blinked in a useless attempt to make out the vague shapes he could see through it. He winced as one of the men probed his fingers over the skin of his abdomen, which was already bruised to hell from too many close calls.

He twisted in the hands that pinned him as someone unwound the tape from his splint only to fasten it back on again. With his burst of adrenaline subsiding, Dean bit back a moan at the fire coursing through the nerves of his ankle.

“No apparent physiological changes,” he heard one of the agents say. “Get him into the showers then straight to the lab.”

“You,” another officer called out to someone. “Help this man.”

Dean gasped as the shirt was finally pulled off his head, though he wished it hadn’t been when he caught another millisecond glimpse too long of Gordon heading towards him in his birthday suit.

“Oh hell no,” Dean growled.

Ignoring him, Gordon came up to Dean’s side and replaced the support of the officers. “You’d rather they shot you full of sedatives?”

“Than take a shower with your naked ass? I’d rather they shot me in the head.”

“Too bad.”

Gordon looped his arm around Dean, whose skin crawled at the sensation of Gordon’s naked body pressing firmly against his. While Dean made a futile effort to squirm free, Gordon tightened his grip so that his rough hand dug painfully hard into the tender skin of Dean’s hip.

While Gordon half guided, half hauled him, Dean’s eyes scanned the area once more. Most of the people had gone through the doors that Dean and Gordon were being directed towards, but the couple that had been separated out were struggling to get down on their knees. It took Dean’s dazed mind a second too long to register the guns pointed at the back of their heads.

“No!” Dean lunged, but didn’t have enough leverage to tear free of Gordon’s hold.

As the shots echoed through the warehouse and the bodies slumped to the ground, Gordon shoved an elbow into Dean’s ribs. “You know, I’m embarrassed for you, Dean, I really am,” Gordon said as he pulled Dean forward. “These toddler tantrums of yours, they gotta stop. It’s damn unprofessional.”

“I’m gonna kill everyone here,” Dean huffed. “Starting with you. How’s that for professionalism?”

A smile touched Gordon’s lips as he patted Dean’s back. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

~~~

_Affutt Air Force Base, Nebraska_

Rufus Turner readjusted the weight of the rifle slung over his shoulder and took one last stroll around the abandoned airfield. It wasn’t like another look would make any difference. He was too late to stop the pick up. Again.

It just happened to be a nice day. There was a crisp chill in the late afternoon air, but the sun was shining and he was trying to figure out why he had wasted this lovely day stepping over corpses of the Infected. He’d like to blame Bobby, though really he only had himself to blame.

When the outbreak had hit, he should have stocked up on a couple of years worth of the finest scotch and found himself a nice secluded cabin in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The Infected were everywhere, but they were too stupid to so much as open a door. It would have been a safe, cozy, way to spend his well-deserved retirement.

Instead of quiet days beside a private lake, he had to be a moron and pick up the phone to let Bobby talk him into this no win mess. Forget one step forward and two steps back, they were perpetually a hundred steps behind everyone. They couldn’t keep up with hunting the Infected or the demons that were opting to take advantage of the situation or even the humans that were worse than all the rest of them.

And the joke that was the CEDA? They were collecting survivors with promises of fun in the sun vacations until this all blew over. Rufus himself had almost bought a ticket until the real story had come through the unofficial airwaves. They were purposefully infecting survivors in the name of finding a cure.

Rufus did his best to avoid humans when at all possible, but when they were taking innocent civilians just to make more monsters, even he had to grudgingly come out of the woodwork to state his objection. He had no qualms about using the rifle at his side to do his talking. The problem was that there were too few of them fighting, too many working with the CEDA and too many miles between sites for them to make any real difference. It was the story of his life.

He was trudging back towards his rust bucket of a truck when he couldn’t help but spare another glance towards the shiny, black beauty parked outside of the pickup site’s gate. Like himself, his truck didn’t have enough left in it to keep up with all these miles and the tank didn’t have enough fuel to make it back to Bobby’s place.

Assuming that the car beckoning him had any fuel in the tanks, it looked like the better choice for getting him back. He continued to his truck and grabbed his bag and radio out of it before heading over to the car. With a bit of a snicker, he imagined just how jealous this thing would make Bobby. The man couldn’t keep a decent car around to save his life.

Suddenly Rufus threw down the bag he carried and went for his gun. He raised the rifle before taking another step forward, keeping a careful eye on the giant of a kid propped up against the side of the car. Blood soaked the boy’s shirt and from where he stood, Rufus couldn’t make out if he was breathing or if he was even still human.

Usually he was the shoot first sort, but there was something about the kid’s posture that left his finger only loosely hovering over the trigger. “Hey!” he called to the kid while keeping a healthy distance. “You human?”

There was no verbal response, but the boy turned his head towards Rufus. The kid was pale enough to be dead though there was no sign of rabid aggression, only a silent plea in the boy’s hurt eyes.

“Okay, I’m coming over, but try any funny business and I’m emptying shells, you hear?”

He almost thought he saw a nod, either way he was convinced enough to risk it. While it was a sorry haul compared to what he had wanted to find, at least rescuing one survivor was better than a completely wasted trip.

As he moved in, the kid tracked him with his head and slowly pulled a hand away from his blood seeping shoulder to motion Rufus to stop. “Stay back.” The boy’s voice was rough, barely clear enough to make out. “I’m infected.”

Rufus scrunched his face and stared at the kid. That was the first he’d heard that one. He’d come across hordes of Infected in all shapes and sizes and seen plenty of good hunters lost to the Green Flu. Not a one of them had the foresight to know the shift was coming.

“That so?” Rufus asked. “You don’t look too squirrely. Is that their blood?”

“It’s just mine...but I’ve been sick for days.”

When he really took in the boy’s voice, Rufus realized it wasn’t only the blood loss making the boy sound weak. The kid was plenty sick all right.

“You got a fever and muscle aches? Maybe some chills and something nasty going on in the respiratory system?” When the kid nodded, Rufus sighed and released the hold on his gun to let it hang loosely from the chest strap. “Kid, you ain’t infected. You just got the regular ol' flu. Damn media,” he grumbled. “You kids these days watch too much television, that’s your problem.”

“What?” The kid’s brow wrinkled in confusion as Rufus again picked up his bag. “The Green Flu...”

“Is a load of CEDA propaganda bull. It’s just a name. The infection, it’s no actual flu, but it is actually flu season. Convenient, huh?” Rufus stiffly knelt down beside the kid and moved his hand aside. “I’m getting too damn old for this. Now let me see this shoulder. You get bit or something?”

“Shot.” The kid’s eyes wandered as Rufus looked him over. “So it really is Croatoan,” the kid mumbled to himself.

Rufus stopped his work and rocked back a bit. “Say that again.” When the kid just waved him off, Rufus shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m the one saving your sorry ass. I’m the one that gets to decide what’s worth sharing. Did you say Croatoan?” With a flash of surprise, the kid nodded. “You a hunter?”

“Yeah, me and my brother. They took him. I gotta...”

“You gotta sit your ass down,” Rufus interrupted as he stopped the half delirious kid from climbing to his feet. He glanced back to the car and it clicked. “That's a ’67 Impala ain't it?” At the boy’s affirmative, Rufus let out another heavy sigh. “Ah, hell, which one are ya?”

“Huh?”

Rufus started digging through his first aid kit then raised a brow to the kid. “Are you Sam or Dean?”

“Sam. How did you...?”

“Bobby’s has had everyone that’s left tearing apart all of creation searching for you two jokers. Here, drink this,” Rufus said as he pushed a bottle of the cheap stuff to the kid’s lips. “He’s gonna be damned pissed they grabbed the other one. You get to tell him.”

“What? We have to get him back,” Sam replied after Rufus pulled the bottle away.

“Dean? Nah, sorry kid. If they took him, there ain’t no getting him back.”


	5. Chapter 5

_February 4th, 2008  
Singer’s Salvage Yard_

Bobby’s eyes drifted from the frying eggs to the boy that hung around his kitchen like a ghost. Things had been manageable when Sam had been knocked out on pain meds, but once he’d started healing up and they’d kept him from pneumonia, things had gotten tense. Once he’d been able enough to walk there had been no keeping him in the house. Lately, he'd been rushing out following anything that half sounded like a local lead on his brother. Each day they didn’t find Dean was one more nail in Sam’s coffin.

"It’s bad enough you’re trying to kill me with those cholesterol bombs,” Rufus griped. “You gotta go and burn them too?”

“I don’t see you volunteering to cook,” Bobby replied as he fumbled for the spatula and dished up the only slightly blackened eggs. “This damn wood stove ain’t exactly predictable.”

“Sure, blame the stove.”

While his mouth was complaining, Rufus didn’t hesitate to grab a fork the second the eggs were set in front of him. One of them was gone before he stopped to take another sip of his drink. He swirled the amber liquid in the glass as he looked across the table to where Sam stood.

“You too good to sit with us now?” Rufus asked.

Sam rolled his stiff shoulder before his head jerked up to look at Rufus. “What?”

Bobby was sweating like a hog standing right over the stove, but it wasn’t until Sam came all the way into the kitchen that the kid shrugged off his patched up jacket and draped it over one of the rickety kitchen chairs. He tipped his head back and brushed his bangs aside.

That hair of his was bordering on ridiculously long, but he refused to cut it. Bobby lost what little appetite he’d had when he remembered that conversation. He’d just assumed Sam had been wanting for scissors and had offered a pair. Sam had stared at them until finally choking out that Dean was the only one who knew how to cut it right. They both knew Dean wasn’t the only to have ever cut Sam’s hair, but it was one more blaring hole where Dean had used to be.

“It won’t bring him back, you know.”

At Rufus’s words, Bobby saw that same silent despair again rise in Sam’s eyes. Sorrow and anger were the only two emotions he’d seen from the boy since Rufus had brought him here. Bobby knew what these boys were to each other. There wasn’t one without the other and no good would come of poking at that wound.

“Rufus...” Bobby warned.

“Don’t you ‘Rufus’ me and before you get any ideas, don’t you go shooting the messenger either, but this house is getting too damn crowded with this giant elephant in the room.”

The look in Sam’s eyes sharpened. “Dean’s still out there.”

“No, kid, he ain’t and it’s time that someone said it. Bobby’s not doing you any favors by letting you go on thinking it.” Bobby busied himself shrugging off his apron when Rufus turned in his chair to stare at him. The only sound was the quiet crackling of the fire while they each silently dared the other to say what no one wanted to hear. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re not just humoring him, are ya?”

“And you’re about to be thrown out on your ass, what’s your point?” 

“I think you know.” Rufus settled back in his chair and took another drink before setting the empty glass heavily down on the table. “We got civilians dying left and right, we got demons and zombies and worst of all, we got humans and your cheap ass liquor.”

“This isn’t funny.” Sam said.

“Damn straight. Funny died a long time ago, kid.” Rufus propped his elbows up on the table and folded his hands. “What I know is that you and Bobby are deluded, self-absorbed morons.”

Bobby slammed his hands down on the table hard enough to shake the plates and silverware sitting on it. He pointed a finger at Sam while he leaned in to glare at Rufus. “If he don’t hit you, I will.”

“You go right ahead. Millions, maybe hundreds of million of people are dead or infected. We’ve lost nearly every hunter we had. One kid, Bobby. Three weeks ago one kid went missing and that’s where both your heads are still at.”

Reaching past Rufus, Bobby grabbed the whiskey bottle from the center of the table. He filled his glass and knocked back a good swig of it, letting the burn slide down his throat before finding the words. It was three weeks to the day and Bobby obviously hadn’t been the only one counting.

“You didn’t know this kid.”

It was the fact that Dean had vanished that made it so damn impossible to accept. Dean didn’t have a lot in common with John, but he did have that same larger than life presence that made him seem untouchable. Without a body, there was no way to believe that he was really gone.

Bobby had seen a couple of these test facilities after the officials who had run them had themselves become the Infected. In reality, he knew what had likely become of Dean and that was also the problem. He would lose all reason if he had to accept that Dean, a boy who might as well have been his own son, had died alone in a laboratory.

When Bobby looked up, Sam’s eyes were large and lost. His shoulders slumped so far that his height almost looked reasonable. Bobby had no doubt that the same thoughts were running through the boy’s head. It didn’t help that Sam had seen a lot more of these facilities firsthand than Bobby had.

Rufus pushed back his chair and headed over to the cupboard. “Dean, he’s the lucky one. This war’s over for him.”

“Then there’s nothing left.”

Sam’s words were so quiet that Bobby nearly missed them, but it was hard to disagree. All they were doing was losing ground to monsters who were trying to fill the gaps left by an all but absent human population. It had been almost two weeks since any of them had seen another non-infected soul. They were only still here in Sioux Falls because Sam insisted that someone had to be here for when Dean came back.

“I’m not saying we gotta pack our bags.” Rufus brought four clean glasses to the table and set one in front of the seat Dean should have been sitting in. “It’d just do us all some good to stop pretending.”

Bobby set a hand on Sam’s unwounded shoulder, giving it a squeeze as the boy reluctantly met his eyes. A nod was all Bobby could manage as he guided Sam to a seat while Rufus twisted the cap off of his last bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

~~~

_February 9th, 2008  
Nebraska State Penitentiary_

Henricksen had entered CEDA claimed facilities so silent that his gentlest footsteps had echoed like thunder down the halls. This wasn’t one of those facilities. Here the sounds of nightmares filled the air and fully masked the fall of his boots on the blood-stained linoleum.

Three weeks ago, he had walked away from everything. He’d tried to get word of the testing to the right people, but they’d either already known, were too afraid to stand up or had flat out declared him a nutcase. When official channels had failed, he’d taken it into his own hands. 

A couple of weeks ago, his dress shoes had been retired for work boots. He hadn’t even bothered packing his suits and his familiar pressed slacks had quickly torn and been replaced with grungy jeans. It was just as well, the pants would only be all the more stained by the time he got out of here.

He kept tight to the wall as his eyes strained in search of potential threats hiding in the darkness. Like most of the other facilities he had broken into, this one obviously had backup generators that kept some of the basic functions running even though the staff were long gone, for all the good it did. 

The emergency lighting was minimal and while the climate controls were still up in some areas, others might as well be walk-in freezers. If the prisoner housing facilities were without heat, he wasn’t likely to find much aside from more corpses awaiting him.

Victor had never taken failure well and lately, it didn’t feel like anything was enough. With the list of testing sites in hand, he’d spent the last several weeks hopping from facility to facility trying, and mostly failing, to beat the clock.

The things he’d found had made him question everything. Despite what he’d told Reed, despite what he knew to be true, he could no longer believe that the Infected were only humans. It just wasn’t that simple.

He had an even harder time believing that those who had left the test subjects to die had ever had any humanity in them at all. The grotesque shells this disease left behind were so many worlds of wrong, but it was the bodies of those who hadn’t changed, who had never even been sick and had died for nothing - that was more than Victor could take.

Every time he got ready to throw in the towel he found one more survivor. It was enough to keep him going, to keep fighting because there was no other way to justify why he was still here when so many millions of others were gone.

With cautious steps, he proceeded down the hallway. The grating blare of a perpetually sounding security alarm screeched in the distance. The backup lights were just enough to draw out long flickering shadows that had Victor tensing his gun hand at the turn of every corner. He still needed the flashlight to illuminate the long hallways, though he used it as little as possible. For the most part, what lay down these halls wasn’t anything he wanted a full view of.

Already he’d seen enough and it didn’t take lighting the area to smell the nostril stinging stench. What his nose couldn’t pick up, his ears did in the wailing cries, manic laughter and scrambling footsteps just out of sight. This facility was still crawling with Infected and there was no way to know how many were contained and how many were freely roaming the halls.

The cells in this block had been built for solitary confinement. In each cell’s solid door was a small window slit that he could peer in through. He walked down the line, shining his flashlight into each cell and not lingering longer than he had to after confirming the cell’s occupant Infected or deceased. If he found anyone alive and human, it would be a miracle.

When he’d gotten a hold of the keys from the guard station, he’d checked the sign-in sheet. No one had marked down having done rounds for over a week. Each cell had its own sink for water as long as the municipal water functioned, but no one trapped here would have had access to food.

Anger gripped his chest as he found most of the cells occupied. The flare of a flashlight beam shone into the cells triggered many of the subjects to leap and claw at the glass. Even knowing it was coming, he found it difficult not to jump at every Infected that slammed into a viewing window. The silent cells were only worse, holding bodies in various stages of decay.

Victor had nearly decided he’d seen enough when he shone his flashlight into the next cell and found a man sitting on the bed. There were no sheets or blankets and all Victor could see of the huddled man were bare legs tucked to his chest and equally exposed arms wrapped around them in a futile effort to find warmth. There was still heat to this cell block, but not enough that Victor felt the need to strip off any of his three layers.

When the flashlight’s beam hit the man’s face, one of the man’s arms moved up to shield his eyes. His movements were confused and cautious. Rather than flinging himself from the bed, the man raised his head to stare towards the door with empty, but very human eyes.

The man slowly stood, seeming uneasy on his feet. His mouthed moved as if he was speaking, but whatever words came out were too quiet for Victor to hear. He could now see that the man wore a short, rumpled hospital gown as he limped towards the door with a creased brow.

Victor’s own brow furrowed as he watched the frail, young man. There was something familiar about him even in the harsh, narrow light with the man squinting and a thick layer of stubble covering his ghostly face.

“Hey!” the man croaked before clearing his throat. “Who’s there?”

Usually, Victor would have already thrown open the cell door, instead he stood frozen as the man stared out the small opening and tried to see past the flashlight. It had taken a moment to register the thinner face and sunken eyes, though there now was no question that he was looking into the cautiously hopeful eyes of Dean Winchester.

“Let me out!”

It would be easy to keep walking. After the things he’d done, there was no reason that Dean Winchester, of all men, deserved to be one of the few left alive. Maybe this really was hell. Either way, Victor failed in his conviction.

He listened to the thud of Dean’s fist banging weakly against the door and took in the desperate green eyes framed in the small opening. It didn’t matter what Dean was, Victor couldn’t force himself to leave any man to starve or to burn alive when the military arrived to destroy all evidence of this facility. At the very least, he’d end this with a mercy kill.

Victor holstered his gun only long enough to work the key into the lock. The pistol was then back in his hand and cocked by the time he spoke again. “Hands on your head, step away from the door.”

“Gordon? Quit screwing around and get me out of here, you son of a bitch.”

“Come on, Dean, now is that anyway to talk to your rescuer?” Victor asked as he slid open the door. “Get on the ground.”

Dean stumbled backwards, disoriented as Victor surged in with his gun raised. Part of Victor couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction at seeing this smug bastard taken down so many notches. The victory was short-lived. Seeing even the ugliest of humans intentionally put in this state was sickening.

“Henricksen?” Dean asked hoarsely. “Oh, you’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me.”

“No joke. On the ground. Now!”

Dean’s eyes scanned the area, but he laced his hands behind his head and didn’t make a break for the door. Impatiently, Victor watched as Dean stumbled around instead of dropping to his knees. It took looking down at Dean’s bare feet to see that the man wasn’t playing games. He was trying to get down without putting all his weight on a foot bound in an ankle brace.

“Just get against the wall,” Victor ordered as he gave Dean a halfhearted shove forward.

There was a resignation that Victor hadn’t expected to find as Dean silently complied. His head lowered and he pressed his palms against the concrete wall. Victor quietly put away his gun and slipped out a pair of handcuffs that he hadn’t been able to give up carrying.

He jerked one of Dean’s arms behind his back only to have his resolve waver further. IV track-marks covered the pale forearm. Being a heroine junkie didn’t fit with what he knew about Dean and the man obviously hadn’t had access to shoot up in here.

Victor put away the cuffs so that he could move the flashlight in for a closer view. He twisted Dean’s arm to reveal the full extent of scarring and ran his thumb over the faded bruising that remained from restraints that hadn’t held the man for over a week.

Releasing the left arm, Victor took Dean’s other arm, more gently this time, and found the same marks plus some kind of numeric code tattooed onto Dean’s wrist. Victor ground his teeth as he stared at the cattle style identification marking.

He tapped a finger against the blue-inked numbers. “They do this to you?”

“What do you care?”

With barely a shrug, Dean remained standing still in his open-back hospital gown without breathing a word of cocky commentary or attempting to put up a fight. As Victor listened to the oddly shallow sound of Dean’s breathing, he moved the flashlight away from Dean’s arms to point at his back. Fading cuts, which almost looked like claw marks, littered the exposed skin and his sides were discolored enough that he probably had more than a few badly bruised, if not broken, ribs.

Dean only stiffened as Victor brushed the fabric of the gown forward to further to reveal the full evidence of beatings and weight loss. When Dean shivered, Victor let the gown fall back into place and stepped away. Dean turned his head to throw a cautious look over his shoulder.

Henricksen remembered the day, not long ago, when this now fragile man had seemed the most profound threat facing humanity. Now Dean filled the role of the most human thing Victor had seen in weeks. 

When he again pulled out his gun, Dean really met his eyes for the first time. “Just get it over with.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Victor replied before motioning with the pistol. “Let’s get out of here.”

There was only a moment of hesitation before Dean complied and headed towards the door. It was pretty clear by the uncertainty in Dean’s step that the man hadn’t expected to ever leave the cell.

Dean looked up and down the halls before returning his attention to Victor. “Any other survivors?”

“There sure as hell better be because if you’re it, there’s nothing left in this world worth saving.” He’d expected a witty comeback, but was taken aback when he only got a weary nod of agreement. Victor tried not to read too much into it as he resumed checking cells. “So where’s Bonnie?”

Victor shone the flashlight back at Dean when no response came. Dean’s eyes were shifted down and he seemed to withdraw further into himself as his hand came up to rub the back of his neck. It was hard to know what to think when Dean just avoided the question entirely.

“I’m looking for a Gordon Walker,” Dean said. “He should be here.”

The name didn’t ring any bells in Victor’s head. Whoever this Gordon was, it wasn’t someone attached to Dean’s official case file. “Friend of yours?”

“I wouldn’t say friend...let’s just say I owe him. The guy’s a sick bastard, but he doesn’t deserve to die here.”

“Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you.” Victor tapped his finger against his flashlight as he again got only silence from Dean. He couldn’t help but press further, mostly because he needed the distraction from the contents of the cells. “This Gordon, is he a psycho serial killer too?”

“Unlike me, yeah.”

At first Victor thought that Dean had already recovered his attitude, but Dean’s face remained neutral. After so long hunting this man, Victor needed the truth. He already knew what it was, but he needed to hear it from Dean’s mouth.

“You’re still expecting me to believe that you’re one of the good guys? Cut the bull, Dean. There’s no one left to fool. I know you and Sam....”

In less than a second Dean went from barely standing to slamming Victor back into the wall. The pistol and flashlight clattered to the floor as Dean gripped the front of Victor’s jacket. “You can spew whatever kind of crap you want about me, but you keep your mouth shut about my brother. He died a hero.”

There was enough conviction and pain in the words to render even Victor silent. Dean’s grip on him was weak, his hands shaky. Despite Victor’s instinct telling him to take Dean down, he waited.

Slowly, Dean let him go and stepped away before turning his back and looked to the ground. The fallen pistol lay beside Dean’s foot. Instead of reaching for it, Dean braced against the wall so he could kick the weapon back towards Victor. By the time Victor retrieved it and the flashlight, Dean was grimacing at the sight of a fallen body and swearing beneath his breath.

“Is that your ‘friend’?” 

“What?” Dean looked up after Victor’s question caught up with him. “No. I just recognized the hair.”

Victor moved the flashlight down the length of the body to see the unusually long, tangled locks. “So you’re a barber in between murder sprees?”

Dean shot him a sharp glare. “You’re batting a thousand, Henricksen.” When Dean looked away, the expression on his face softened to a sadness, which combined with the next words to leave Dean’s mouth, stopped Victor in his tracks. “I promised her she’d be okay.”

There were few things in Victor’s mind so clear as his visual of Dean Winchester. Yet nothing he was seeing or hearing from Dean now fit for a guy that dug up corpses for kicks.

Victor stepped away and tried to talk himself out of trusting a single word coming out of Dean’s mouth. These were the same inconsistencies people had brought to him as proof that Dean wasn’t the monster Victor knew him to be. 

He’d blown off each and every one of them. SWAT team, police officers, lawyers and wardens - all reputable professionals that he’d told to go screw themselves for being so damn gullible. It was the same thing the CEDA agents he’d approached had told him about these testing facilities.

“Henricksen!”

Victor’s eyes were focused on searching a cell when Dean shouted the warning. The tone said enough that he spun around with his gun raised. He took a step back as he saw a hugely bloated thing with boil-covered skin lumbering towards him. It let out a groan and stomped closer, moving far slower than a typical Infected. He aimed his gun for the easy shot and pulled the trigger just as Dean’s warning not to shoot reached his ears.

The bullet easily hit its target and the former man exploded in a shower of putrid bile that fell to the ground with noisy plops. He stumbled backwards as it stuck to his skin and clothing and seeped down his forehead, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. Victor dropped his flashlight in a desperate attempt to clear the thick fluids from his face.

He jumped when he heard the shattering of glass behind him. “What the hell was that?”

“Just getting a weapon,” Dean replied. “That crap you’re covered in is gonna attract every damn zombie in this place.”

“You’ve run into these before?”

Victor’s vision was still blurred, his eyes blinking to try and expel the bile. He could only vaguely make out Dean’s unsteady stance as the man strained just to hold the fireman’s axe he’d pulled from the wall.

“The agents called them Boomers because, well, you saw it. They collected that nasty ass stuff in jars and...we just gotta hope most of these things are locked away.”

It might have been nine kinds of crazy, but Victor got what Dean was saying about the bile-popping Infected. He even heard the confirmation of an approaching horde. What he didn’t get was why Dean was still standing beside him. Dean had been far enough back that the bile shouldn’t have hit him.

“It got you too?”

"No, I’m clean.” As the sounds of the horde grew louder, Dean moved closer to Victor. “But dude, you’re so screwed.”

There was no time to ask why Dean wasn’t running, or at least trying to crawl away, before the first of the horde skidded around the corner. Victor couldn’t clearly see what was happening, but he heard Dean grunt, followed by the sickening thuds of what had to be Dean’s axe burying itself in flesh. 

A frenzy of hands reached for Victor, backing him against the wall, but each time one tightened their grip on him, Dean somehow managed to knock it away. His vision was beginning to return when Dean was hurled to the ground.

He landed hard on his back and skidded over the bile coated concrete. The impact stunned him enough that he only cringed and tried to curl onto his side as several of the Infected leapt on top of him, clawing at his chest. Victor pushed off the wall and, with several well aimed shots, felled the remaining Infected.

At Victor’s feet, Dean uselessly pushed at one of the Infected that had collapsed on top of him. By the pained tightness in his face, it was obvious that the body lying over his ribs was the last thing Dean needed. Victor easily pulled it off before he knelt down to help Dean to sit.

Victor struggled to catch his own breath as he watched Dean clutch his side and pull in shallow, pained gasps. The thin fabric of his hospital gown had been torn, leaving the bloody claw marks on his chest and shoulders exposed. Dean’s face contorted in pain as he sat shivering with the tattered fabric barely clinging to him.

There was nothing Victor could say. He could only stare at the half dead young man who hadn’t hesitated to risk his life for him. It was something very few men would do for a perfect stranger, and Victor wasn’t a stranger. He was a man who had made it his life’s work to make Dean’s life hell.

Victor grimaced, wiping the last chunks of glop from his face and wishing he had so much as a clean jacket to offer Dean. Hell, he’d settle for a few intelligent words to break the silence.

“You saved my life.”

It was far from profound, but stating the obvious was the best Victor could come up with right now. Dean looked underwhelmed or maybe just on the verge of passing out.

“Don’t take it too personally,” Dean muttered. “When you got nothing to live for, you’ll die for anything.”

No one wanted to believe it was only that more than Victor, but that wasn’t what he’d seen. “You didn’t even think.”

“There’s my problem.”

Victor shook his head in disbelief and held out a hand to help Dean up. “I’ve never seen a man fight like that.”

“You pick it up hunting monsters.” The words came easily from Dean’s lips as he accepted Victor’s hand. “Like I’ve been trying to tell you, it’s what I do.”

He found himself just staring into Dean’s eyes, searching for even the slightest hint of deception. Not only couldn’t he find one, but the fact was that Dean no longer had a motive to keep up that charade and after the last few weeks, it didn’t even sound that crazy anymore.

“I don’t believe it.”

Once Dean was on his feet, Victor stripped off his jacket and tossed it to the floor. They were going to have to ditch all the clothes before they walked back onto the open streets, but for now Victor unbuttoned his top shirt and held it out to Dean who just stared at it.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe,” Dean replied as he tentatively took the shirt.

“No, I mean, the whole damn while - it was all the truth.”

“Wow. You catch on fast.”

A smirk ghosted over Victor’s lips at the hint of the Dean he remembered. It was a touch of familiarity in a world that had otherwise been flipped on its head. The comfort was short lived as the full impact of that implication settled over him. To think that saying sorry could touch it seemed an insult.

Dean looked up after slipping on the shirt and wrapping the gown around his waist. He seemed to pick up on Victor’s unease and waved him off. “You can start by buying me dinner.”

Victor was nearly carrying Dean by the time they made it to the next cell block. Whatever reserve of energy had driven the man to be able to fight had all but vanished now. Victor had wanted to call it quits, but Dean had stubbornly insisted on continuing to check cells even as he could only barely stand.

They were on the last section when Victor’s flashlight illuminated a man sitting ramrod straight in one of the cell’s chairs. The man’s expression was disturbingly calm as he moved his eyes up, apparently unbothered by the sudden influx of light.

“I got someone.”

At Victor’s word’s Dean switched to leaning against the wall so that he could peer through the cell’s window. “That’s the son of a bitch,” he confirmed before pounding on the cell door. “Hey, Gordy, you still human in there?”

Gordon stood as Victor unlocked the door. He looked a lot surer on his feet than Dean, but his movements were still slow and overly calculated as he stepped out of the cell. 

“Took you long enough,” Gordon remarked with a dismissive glance towards Dean. “I was starting to get hungry.”

There was a detached, coldness in Gordon’s eyes that reminded Victor too much of many of the hardened criminals he’d seen put away. While the look was a familiar one, it only stood out to Victor as he realized for the first time just how far from that Dean really was.


	6. Chapter 6

Gordon kept a fair distance from Dean’s new friend. Everything about the man screamed of self-righteous cop, or Fed as it turned out. How Dean could be so sloppy as to get twisted up with that sort was beyond Gordon. The guy made his skin crawl.

Dean was the one partially draped over Henricksen’s shoulder, but Gordon could feel the agent’s eyes on him. Henricksen had a serious death wish if he was even considering trying something. Gordon might be at his weakest, but he could still put a swift end to the nosey agent.

It was Dean’s words that cut the tension. “I got it.” He slid his arm from the agent’s shoulder and took a few less than steady steps away. “Neither of you are fitting into my locker room fantasy.”

Despite the casual words, Dean couldn’t hide that he was in real bad shape. He stripped down, standing naked and trembling beneath a weak stream of water in the prison shower area with every last exposed weakness on display. Gordon had originally thought it should’ve been Dean that had done his prison time, but looking at him here and now, it was plain to see that he wouldn’t have lasted a day.

Keeping Dean alive these past weeks had been a serious pain in the ass. The hunter had been looking for death. Luckily for Dean, Gordon couldn’t care less what he wanted. It had paid off in the end, Dean hadn’t left without him, though now Gordon was stuck with a half dead, suicidal hunter and his pet FBI agent.

It was a sloppy agent on top of everything else, the guy had gone and gotten himself covered in Boomer bile and hadn’t thought to mention that before he’d let Gordon shove past him. It left Gordon standing with these two in the icy spray of the prison’s shower scrubbing off all traces of the slime before risking hitting the streets.

Gordon wasn’t in any condition to pick unnecessary fights, but the agent was staring at him again and Gordon couldn’t keep on being polite about it. “Unless you want me to take you up on that silent invite, how about looking somewhere else?”

Henricksen abided, though clearly only for show. “Just trying to put my finger on something.”

With a raised brow, Gordon kept a real careful eye on Henricksen’s movements as the man grabbed a couple of towels. Henricksen wrapped one around his own waist before tossing the other to Dean, who just barely had the reflexes about him to catch it.

Silence fell over the showers when Gordon shut off the last noisily splattering showerhead. The only reason they could get away with all the racket was because the idiot agent had already attracted and killed every loose Infected in the place.

“Yeah, and what’s that?” Gordon asked as he grabbed his own towel.

“How it is that you managed to come out of this looking alright.”

“Ah, I get it,” Gordon chuckled. “And I appreciate the compliment, I do. You see, it’s real simple. Some of us are survivors, and others...”

His eyes drifted towards Dean. The boy stumbled while stepping into one of the prison issue uniforms they’d dug out of a locker. It was a couple of sizes too big and Dean’s fingers weren’t quite coordinated enough to pull up the jumpsuit’s zipper.

“Some are just real delicate,” he concluded.

Gordon was plenty lightheaded himself and his limbs felt ten times heavier than they ought to, but he was managing fine with keeping on his feet. The thing was, it wasn’t Dean’s body that was the problem and that was a damn frustrating thing.

Irritation flooded Dean’s eyes before he made a sloppy throw of heaving his towel at Gordon. “Get your ass over here and I’ll show you delicate.”

It was all for show. Gordon had thought cutting the umbilical cord between Dean and those he’d been clinging to would draw out Dean’s strengths, but he’d made a serious miscalculation. It was written all over Dean’s face and showed in every line of his body. With Sam gone, and him thinking that Singer was dead, Dean hadn’t been drawn into rage. He’d just given up.

“Don’t you go taking it the wrong way,” Gordon replied. “You’re a capable hunter, Dean, but you could be one of the best if you’d just listen to your instincts.”

Monsters were a different thing from humans and Dean wasn’t so good with people. He easily dispatched every Infected that came his way, but he begged to be easy prey for humans. It was clear in the fact that Dean had been beaten within an inch of his life while Gordon didn’t have a single bruise on him. The boy just kept on running his mouth until someone else had to shut it for him.

“Yeah, thanks, Mr. Miyagi. I’ll mediate on that.” With the top half of his jumpsuit still unzipped, Dean limped over to the nearest bench and lowered himself onto it. He scrubbed a hand over his face before dropping his fist onto the seat. “Or better yet, how about you just shut the hell up?”

Gordon zipped up his own uniform and stood back with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. While he watched, Henricksen brought a first aid kit over to Dean’s bench. The agent slipped the jumpsuit back off of Dean’s shoulders to expose the fresh cuts that had started seeping blood again.

Dean shoved Henricksen’s hand away and tried to pull the fabric back up. “I can take care of it.”

“Yeah, right.” Henricksen moved Dean’s hands aside before the boy could zip up his uniform. “How about you just work on sitting so I don’t have to scrape you off the floor again?” The agent pressed a gauze pad to the largest set of jagged wounds. “Doesn’t make you ‘delicate’.”

“That wasn’t entirely fair of me,” Gordon admitted as he wandered towards the lockers. “I heard you hollering, Dean. All the way down the halls, I heard you scream.”

Gordon flipped open a few of the employee lockers, digging through the miscellaneous contraband until he found what he was looking for. He snatched out a smashed up pack of cigarettes and knocked one into his hand. He kept digging until he found a lighter and flicked the flame to life.

“Whatever they did to you, it wasn’t what they did to the rest of us and that was your own damn fault.” Gordon took a long drag and let his eyes fall closed before looking back at Dean. “If you’d kept to yourself like I’d told you, you would’ve been fine.”

Dean shifted uneasily on the bench and met Gordon’s eyes. “Is there a point coming or did solitary just make you an even nuttier son of a bitch?”

“I’m sorry.”

For a good thirty seconds Dean just sat there with his jaw hanging open. It was damn near comical. Finally it closed, but the confusion remained.

“Come again?”

“I had a little time to think...” Gordon flicked off some ashes and leaned back against the wall. “Bringing you here was a mistake. I just think it’s only right that I tell you that, last I heard, Bobby Singer was alive and kicking.”

~~~

_February 10th, 2008  
Singer’s Salvage Yard_

Sam scribbled the dying ballpoint pen at the top of the paper. When it still wouldn’t fess up any ink, he flicked it aside and pulled open one of the desk’s drawers. He dug through the random mix of small weaponry, office supplies and talismans for anything that looked like it could write.

With more force than necessary, he shoved the drawer shut again. He didn’t actually care about finding a pen or the survivor numbers and locations that he was trying to write in the notebook. This command central job was Bobby’s thing. Sam had only volunteered to give Bobby a break and because he couldn’t stop listening for that one voice that would make everything okay.

Every time a static ridden message came through, there was that split second of hope that shattered the instant the person on the other end spoke. Most of the people who radioed in had never even heard of Dean and somehow that hurt nearly as much as the voice not belonging to his brother.

“Hey, Bobby!” Rufus called from the living room. There was an unusual edge to his tone that made Sam turn in his chair. “Looks like you got a pile of convicts stumbling all over your fine lawn.”

There were some clattering sounds before Bobby shouted back from the kitchen where he was melting down silver. “Why in the hell are you hollering at me about it? Get off your lazy ass and go shoot them yourself.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m just wondering how many Infected you’ve seen driving a car.”

The noise in the kitchen went silent as Bobby left behind his work. Sam’s heart raced in his chest and he jumped from his chair, only barely remembering to grab his gun before heading to the living room.

It was the same surge of distant hope he got with the first crackle of every radio transmission, one he knew he should temper with common sense, but he’d grown used to the heartbreak. Despite Rufus’s guidance, Sam knew that if he gave up on Dean, he might as well just give up altogether. He wasn’t ready to surrender.

“Which welcome gift should I send out?” Rufus asked.

The man’s hand hovered over his array of weaponry that lay out over the coffee table. Sam ignored him, focusing instead on the scene out the front window. A fairly new car with government plates sat outside and three men were walking from it straight towards the house. Their glaringly bright orange prison jumpsuits screamed against the colorless winter backdrop.

Their movements were sluggish as two of the men supported a third man between them. The center man’s head hung forward and it was hard to tell if he was walking or being dragged, but nothing about the way the group moved suggested they were infected.

Sam’s brow creased as the man on the left came into clear view. “I think that’s...Gordon.”

“Gordon Walker?” Rufus jerked his head up and looked back out the window. “Molotov cocktail it is.”

It was impossible to believe that he was even awake when he recognized the man on the right as Agent Henricksen. Gordon and Henricksen seemed to be arguing with each other. Sam was too distracted trying to get a clear view of the third man to care what the dispute was about.

Bobby’s clunking steps came up behind him. “What do we got?”

Sam barely glanced far enough over his shoulder to see Bobby’s shotgun at the ready. Right now, he could barely breathe.

“It’s Dean.”

The man’s face was still hidden, but his bare feet came into view as the trio made it through the graveyard of rusted car frames. A clunky ankle brace immobilized the man’s right foot. It was enough for Sam.

He didn’t register whatever words Bobby called after him. Nothing could have stopped him from throwing open the front door as he raced from the house with all the energy of a kid on Christmas morning. Common sense didn’t kick in until Henricksen swung a gun in his direction.

Sam froze, holding his own gun in clear view and didn’t hesitate in slowly lowering it to the ground. His trembling hand wasn’t steady enough to shoot anyway. Bobby and Rufus were in a better position to jump in if things got bad. 

Henricksen didn’t aim his gun and merely looked cautious while Gordon’s expression flowed from shock to irritation. “See, exactly what I was telling you,” Gordon said to Henricksen. “You gotta take off the head just to be sure.”

“Is he alive?” Sam called anxiously towards them.

“You really think we’d haul his corpse around just to give you peace of mind?” Gordon asked. “Dean here just spent half the ride puking his guts out all over my damn seat.” Gordon turned his glare on Dean. “Serves you right for not listening, by the way.”

“Shove it as far as it’ll go, Gordy.”

Those weakly spoken, defiant words were the final confirmation Sam had needed to force all doubt from his mind. He strode to close the distance between him and Dean, all but ignoring Gordon and Henricksen. He only slowed when Dean jerked in their arms as if startled.

Dean was apparently out of it enough that he hadn’t noticed who Gordon had been talking to. When Dean looked up, Sam only barely registered the complete bewilderment in his glassy green eyes. Sam’s attention was fixed on the pained, sunken features that were as white as porcelain and looked just as fragile. 

All at once, he was hit with a wave of elation, disbelief and despair. His brother was alive, but Sam had never seen him this weak. Part of him was afraid that if he reached out to Dean that he either wouldn’t really be there or he would break at the contact.

“Sam?” The same disbelief filled Dean’s voice and was plainly written in his tired eyes. “How...?”

“It’s okay, Dean.”

Every fear Sam had was overridden by the need to hold his brother safely in his arms. Dean nearly collapsed against him once he was transferred from Henricksen and Gordon’s support. Sam clutched his arms around his brother, pulling him in tighter as he felt Dean’s subtle shaking and only easing his embrace when Dean muffled a pained groan against Sam’s shoulder.

His brow knitted as he looked between his brother and Henricksen. Up close he barely recognized the agent. Aside from the casual clothing and rougher beard nothing was physically different about him, but the expression on his face was unfamiliar. The unease Sam had felt about Henricksen being here evaporated when he saw nothing but compassion and concern in the man’s haunted eyes.

“What happened to him?”

“No clue. Found him like this and he’s not talking.” Henricksen eyes moved between Sam and Dean as he holstered his gun.

“You found him?”

Part of Sam hated that it hadn’t been him, that if one of the men they’d spent the last year running from hadn’t found his brother, Dean would’ve been dead. At the same time he was too grateful at having his brother back to care how he had gotten here. He just wished he’d been able to get him here sooner.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Henricksen shook his head and almost smiled. “Just when I thought the world couldn’t get any stranger I find out you two...and this guy,” he added, jutting a thumb towards Gordon, “are the only ones with a damn clue.”

Sam’s eyes drifted back to Gordon. The man was standing disturbingly still just watching him. On closer observation, he realized that Gordon also looked half ready to drop.

“Relax.” Gordon tilted his head thoughtfully as he considered Sam. “Hardly seems worth the trouble to kill you just now. Apparently you’d crawl right back out of the ground anyway.”

“And I’d kill your ass,” Dean muttered.

“Sure. I’m pissing my pants worrying about that one.”

“You’re gonna be pissing blood if you try anything, Walker.”

Sam jumped slightly at Bobby’s words. Rufus was still inside shooting lethal glares out the window, but Bobby now stood just behind Sam still gripping his shotgun at the ready. Even while his gun pointed at Gordon, Bobby’s eyes were locked on Dean.

“Boy, when’s the last time you had yourself a decent meal?”

“Uh...two hours ago? Ate a whole box of power bars.” Dean wrapped an arm loosely around his abdomen and cringed. “That crap never did agree with me.”

Both Sam and Bobby’s eyes moved back to Henricksen when the agent cleared his throat. “They’ve both been locked in abandoned cells for at least a week.”

Unconsciously, Sam again tightened his grip on Dean, whose eyes were fixed on the ground. Sam struggled to keep the appearance of calm, but he'd seen these places and he knew what happened in them. He couldn’t keep his thoughts from his brother having been left alone to die after being used by these people.

Dean shrugged it off. “The food sucked anyway.”

Bobby exchanged a look with Sam and gave him a solemn nod. “I’ll get some chicken broth on.”

“Do me up a sirloin burger while you’re at it,” Dean said.

Bobby’s eyes glistened as a sad smile spread across his face. He reached out to touch his hand to the rough stubble of Dean’s cheek. Dean nuzzled into the contact before Bobby ruffled Dean’s already rumpled hair.

“It’s damn good to be seeing you, boy.”

“Yeah, you too, Bobby.”

With his shotgun lowered, Bobby headed back for the house. After another glance to Gordon and Henricksen, Sam leaned in further to whisper into Dean’s ear. “What about them?”

“Victor’s cool.” At Sam’s look Dean shrugged. “I know, I never thought I’d say it either. Gordon...he’s still Gordon, but whatever. By now he’s saved my ass about as many times as he tried to kill yours. I guess I owe the jerk a cup of soup.” Dean gave a weak wave to the two men. “Come on. Bobby’s Diner is open.”

Rufus stood just inside the doorway like a bouncer. He wore a face that would’ve scared even Sam if he hadn’t already grown used to the man’s glower. When Sam helped Dean inside, Rufus stepped forward. Sam felt Dean tense under the close inspection.

“If you wanna take my temperature, you’re gonna have to take a number,” Dean said.

“So you’re what all the fuss has been about?” Dean only looked all the more defensive at Rufus’s words, though the tone actually qualified for a friendly greeting in Rufus’s book. “About damn time you showed, these two were driving me nuts pining for you.”

Rufus’s attention moved to Gordon and Henricksen as the men came in behind Sam. “Just so we’re clear on the house rules, the couch is mine. The things on this coffee table are mine.” Rufus made a sweeping motion with his arms to the area behind him. “This side of the room is mine and the Tucson novelty mug in the cupboard is mine.”

Bobby poked his head out of the kitchen just long enough to glare. “And just so we’re clearer, the whole damn house is mine. If it’s not yours and your last name ain’t Winchester then don’t you go touching it. Sam, give Dean my bed.”

“I don’t need a bed,” Dean grumbled. “I’ve been lying around for weeks.”

“Good,” Bobby replied. “Then you’ve had plenty of practice and won’t have any trouble staying put.”

Despite Dean’s insistence on staying out of bed, Sam could feel him leaning heavier and heavier against him and Dean didn’t try to stop Sam from leading him. As soon as they entered the bedroom, Sam closed the creaky hinges of the door to shut out the empty threats being exchanged by the crowd in the kitchen.

He helped Dean the rest of the way to the bed and pulled back the covers before easing him down to sit on the edge of the mattress. Silently, Sam watched his brother run his hand over the comforter with an apparent fascination. Dean looked completely overwhelmed.

“A mattress and everything,” Dean remarked. “How’d I rate that?”

Sam grimaced at the tone that wasn’t all sarcasm. His brother was legitimately marveling at the threadbare comforter. With a weary sigh, Sam lowered himself to sit on the end of the bed.

“It was pretty rough, huh?”

“Let’s just say I won’t be sleeping in the same room as a toilet again so just keep that in mind next time you’re playing tour guide.” When Dean looked up his pale face was a mask of concern. “I really hate to agree with Gordon, but how are you not dead?”

“Rufus found me, brought me back here, and him and Bobby stitched me up.”

“Rufus...let me guess, that’s Mr. Sunshine out there?” Sam nodded and Dean’s eyes drifted to the far side of the room. “I was so damn sure if the bullet hadn’t killed you...”

“It was just the flu. The infection wasn’t what we thought.”

“Nothing much was.”

Sam stood from the bed and crouched down to pull a first aid kit out from beneath it. “Let’s get you out that uniform.”

He’d expected Dean to be all too happy to get the thing off, but his brother didn’t even look up at the suggestion. “Maybe if you play your cards right, I’ll strip for you later.”

The wrinkled prison jumpsuit hung baggy on Dean and made him look all the rougher, but what bothered Sam more was the way that Dean held himself like everything hurt. He seemed tentative about taking each breath. Whatever was beneath the uniform was far worse than the uniform itself and by the way Dean avoided his eyes, Sam knew his brother didn’t want him to see it. 

“Dean...”

“Victor already patched me up.” Dean scooted down and eased himself back to lay stiffly on the squeaky springs of the sagging mattress. “I’ve had guys undressing me for weeks. I’d just like to keep some clothes on for five minutes, okay?”

Dean moved his hand up to rub his face, which let the oversized jumpsuit’s sleeve slide down to his elbow. He instantly threw his arm down, but it was too late for Sam to not have gotten a glimpse of what was hidden there.

When Sam reached out for Dean’s wrist, his brother moved to avoid his grasp. “Dean, just let me see.”

“Nothing to see.” Sam hardened his glare on Dean until his brother gave in. “Seriously, dude. There was just this wild party and I didn’t have a cocktail napkin to write the waitress’s number on...”

Sam finally got a hold of Dean’s arm and gingerly pulled up his sleeve. His fingers hovered over the crudely scribed identification numbers inked into his brother’s skin and traced down the darkened veins and injection site scars. Patches of Dean’s skin were bruised while others were discolored by a rash that was undoubtedly an allergic reaction to something they’d exposed him to.

“Damn it, Sam.” Dean jerked his arm away and tugged the sleeve back down. “See, I knew you’d make that face. Wasn’t your fault and doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? Dean...they tortured you.”

“Yeah, whatever. They did the same and worse to people who deserved it a hell of a lot less than me.” Dean turned his head on the pillow so that he was again facing Sam, though his eyes remained on the far wall. “I thought you were dead.” Dean ran his tongue over his cracked lips. “None of the rest mattered.”

“I know, Dean.” When Dean finally looked up to him, his eyes were weary and still uncertain, but somehow he was smiling. “What?”

“Does Bobby just not own a pair of scissors?”

Sam shook his bangs out of his eyes and laughed just to fight back the tears he knew Dean didn’t want to see. “Says the guy whose face looks like a hedgehog.”

“It’s probably not a bad thing that I haven’t seen a mirror.” Dean’s hand felt over his cheeks before his eyes moved towards the door. “You better get out there before Gordon and Victor try to kill each other again.”

Sam grasped the covers and pulled them up to tuck around Dean’s chest. He absently patted the creases from the fabric before sitting back down on the edge of the mattress.

“No, it’s fine. Maybe they’ll distract Bobby and Rufus from trying to kill each other.” A frown pulled down the corner of Sam’s lips. Despite how much he wanted to be here, after being held in solitary, Dean might not be up to the attention. “Unless you need some time alone…”

Dean grunted as he scooted over on the bed. The movement seemed to be enough to take Dean’s remaining strength as he collapsed back down onto the mattress. Sam’s expression was questioning until Dean gave a nod towards the open spot on the bed next to him.

The concern on Sam’s face softened as he shifted on the bed to sit beside Dean. He rested his hand on Dean’s shoulder, his thumb rubbing gentle circles over the bloodstained fabric of the jumpsuit. It was less than a minute before Dean’s eyes fell closed and his uneven breaths smoothed out.

Sam didn’t want to think how long it must have been since Dean had felt safe enough to let himself sleep. He only looked frailer nestled into the pillow without being aware enough to keep his façade up, but he was alive and Sam had every intention of keeping him that way.

His hand ran over Dean’s hair before he leaned back against the headboard and let out a breath that it felt as if he had been holding for weeks.


End file.
